He worked on the Wall that winter, shivering the nights away by the meager fire in the guardhouses on the top, climbing forever stairs every day. They stretched on to infinity, and every time he thought the top was in sight, they curved around the mountain and there were another hundred steps. But the view from the top was spectacular, all grey stone and blue or black sky and stubbornly green mountains. Even in the heart of the fire he never saw anything crimson.

It was the kind of winter to freeze a man's lungs in his chest, and the rawness of it kept him too miserable to think. He was grateful for the cold, and even for the damp.

Then the rumors caught up.

It wasn't a problem, not really. There was nothing to connect a polite and rangy human kid with scruffy hair and punk earcuffs with that youkai, that terrible, oedipal Sha of Xienyang. Even in those days most youkai found it wisest to wear limiters, if for no other reason than to keep the advantage of surprise on their side. Certainly he hadn't, although he considered himself a simple man most of the time, been simple enough to travel under his own name. He called himself poison.

But even if rumors of that faraway youkai washed over just-Doku of eh-you-know-hick-town-nowhere-special, nothing could separate him from the Jien who had stood with his heart pounding while his mother's blood ran down his blade, who had met bewildered crimson eyes and left them alone to an empty house and a body to bury.

So.

When he ran out of Yellow River to follow, he aimed for the Yangtze, going south. The weather was getting beautiful now. The world had turned a uniform yellow-green with sprouting things, and some days he managed to think about nothing at all.

But the air turned warm, and then hot. He was used to loving summer. Summer meant plenty of work on other people's fields, plenty of food, fishing with his brother (it wasn't to be thought of), cold beer in the evening with his friends and helping the kid catch fireflies (don't think about it) and scuffling with him in the dusty streets, and his mother (don't think, don't think) too torpid with the heat to be cruel five days out of seven.

Now all it meant was dust in his clothes, dust in his hair, in his throat, in his eyes, dust caking his fingernails and turning to hot slime on his sweaty palms. Sometimes, even when he lifted his hands into the light and stared at them head on, his imagination turned them red.

He had to get somewhere that had air conditioning before he went the rest of the way out of his mind. It wasn't just a luxury anymore. So he stopped at the first town he came to, and walked straight to the biggest building he saw.

It turned out to be an orphanage, run by monotheist nuns. The Eldest Sister was an older woman with kind eyes, and she gave him a futon in the basement and meals with the rest of them in exchange for janitorial work. Jien didn't mind. Scrubbing wooden floors and walls was exactly the kind of energetic, mind-numbing activity he was looking for, and there was something miserably satisfying in cleaning the windows and lending a hand to the endless supply of laundry.

Besides, he'd always been good with kids. Maybe he wasn't one anymore. Grown men always said you never knew you were losing your innocence until it was gone, but he'd traded his away with open eyes, life for life.

Either way, he could play hard enough to keep them happy, and say no casually enough to keep them in line. They adored him. He kind of liked them back.

The Eldest Sister's darling was a grey-eyed girl with brown pigtails, one Xiaohei who Jien detested on sight. She was exactly the kind of sweet-voiced, wide-eyed popular girl who used to try to flirt with him as though he had no connection to the skinny, scruffy little redhead they edged away from in the streets. Xiaohei was an edger, too. Most days saw her flinching away from her grim and silent seatmate, who completely ignored her and her discomfort.

He hated girls like that, girls who were sweet and modest like they weren't superior, egocentric, narrow-minded bitches. If he ignored her long enough, if he didn't do it coldly and give her a challenge, he figured, she'd leave him alone.

She didn't, though. She brought him apples and water, homework and problems, just like most of the rest of the kids. She treated him like a favorite teacher, and she didn't act coy with him like she did with most of the boys her age. Grudgingly, he warmed to her, especially after she actually reached out to her seatmate on the Eldest Sister's suggestion. He hadn't wanted to tell her to, himself. He was afraid of what might have come out of his mouth on the subject of people who despised the suffering of others, for one thing.

For another, he wasn't sure he had the right to talk. He hadn't made any headway with the boy, either. He hadn't even tried very hard. His casual feelers had all been ignored, and although he kept making them he hadn't stepped up the intensity the way he maybe should have.

In any case, the boy slapped her down so hard, cold, and indifferent that she came running to Jien crying. At least, she said he had. She said he'd asked her how she could smile. It seemed like a fair question to Jien, from a miserable orphan to one who managed to touch happiness once in a while, but Xiaohei said that the way he'd said it made her feel like winter.

If the boy was starting to spread his pain to other people, Jien couldn't just let him get on with it anymore.

He pleaded off recess the next day, saying that the schoolroom was a dusty disaster and he had a lot of work to do in it. Yes, even though it was a rainy day; they would just have to entertain themselves without him. He knew who would be hiding at a desk.

He mopped in silence and wiped the desks while the boy read, building himself up as a presence in the room. You had to take things slow with wild animals, even tortoises. Even when he started wiping down the boy's desk, the last one, he didn't speak at once. He opened the conversation by picking the book up to look at the cover.

"Journey West, huh?" he asked casually. "Your name's Cho, isn't it? Any relation?"

Bespectacled eyes slid over to him, ash-green, a frozen swamp. The only answer he gave was to shove his glasses back up his nose, raising them high to where they glinted in the light from the window. Not funny.

Having expected that, Jien was undeterred. "How old are you, Cho Gonou, nine?" His real guess was ten, but a wrong estimate might prick the pride this kid was carrying like a knapsack, might get a reaction.

"Twelve," the boy bit off, turning back to his book.

He raised an eyebrow. "Pretty scrawny twelve. That's what happens when you don't eat. You stay short."

The freeze slid towards him again, 'what do you care' and 'what do you know about it' and 'go away' all in one.

"My brother's about your age," he went on ruthlessly, even though it was only himself he was hurting, "that's how I know. He didn't grow as much when we couldn't get a lot to eat."

"The food here is terrible,' Gonou said shortly.

Turning the ruthlessness on his target, he said, "Your ma must have been a great cook, then. The food here's pretty good."

He got a flinch, too. Just one eyelid tightening, subtle as a moth's breath. "It has no flavor," he boy stated flatly.

"Eat it anyway," he said heartlessly, dropping his rag into the bucket and straightening up. "Even if you don't want it, your body does."

This time the book actually went down. He'd been wrong about the look in those eyes. They weren't frozen. That hard sheen wasn't frost, but the black shell of white-hot embers.

"You should care about your body," he answered the furious scorn as he turned to leave. "It's your friend when no one else is."

He noticed at dinner that night that Gonou ate less than usual. He shoved it around his plate more, though, with a frown that had something behind it. Jien didn't push. If he could make Gonou make the decision to approach him, things would be easier.

He was lucky the kid wasn't older. There wasn't a twelve-year-old born who could resist curiosity for long, and in fact it wasn't long before Gonou broke his routine to read inside on a clear day, parking himself and his book in the chapel where Jien was scrubbing down the pews.

Jien smiled into his bucket and kept his peace. He broke the silence himself, though, with a friendly, 'On your feet, kid, gotta scrub under your butt," calculated to annoy anyone who lived in his head.

This time he got an actual glare for his trouble as Gonou stood, and something inside him clenched in triumph. The boy was actually looking at him, meeting his eyes like he was real. "The body's an illusion,' Gonou said abruptly. "An unreal thing is no one's friend."

Jien grinned amiably at him. "It's not good to read too much of that Buddhist shit too young," he advised. "Messes you up big-time. Who cares if it's an illusion? Whether the world is real or not, it's where we live. Anyway, don't forget about karma."

The glare turned dubious.

"Karma's everywhere. When it's small, we call it cause and effect. Like, if I punch this wood hard without being careful how I do it, my hand's really gonna hate me for a while. Or if you starve your body, it can't do anything for you. You hurt, you get hurt. You help, you get helped. You don't, you don't."

"How is my body supposed to help me," Gonou froze him, too cold even for a scoff. But he was talking.

"Keeps you strong," Jien said, still scrubbing. "So you can do what you have to get it out, or even just keep it away for a while."

"It?"

"It," he said firmly, and moved on to another pew. Everybody had problems. It wasn't important for him to hear.

Eventually, he heard a small footstep behind him. "What do I do?" Gonou asked. "To get it out." He knew that tone. It was a strangled voice, from a chest all tight with pride twisted into knots.

He shrugged. "This is what I do," he explained, "right now. Sisters gave me this job, and I found it it works. Gets me too tired to think. Makes things clean."

"Clean?" Gonou asked skeptically.

"Sure," he said easily. "Even neat people leave sweat and hair and dead skin wherever they go, and the world makes dust like that's how it breathes. So I look at it," he said, snapping his rag over the pew to wet it down, more violently than usual, "and I think to myself, DIE, FILTH!" he yelled, and gave the innocent wood all the grease his elbow had. When he was finished, he turned a friendly smile down at a small face that wasn't sure whether or not to be appalled, and went on, "And it's like I won a battle and made the world a little better."

"It would take a lot," Gonou said coldly, turning on his heel and stalking out, "to make the world better."

"Damn right," Jien agreed soberly. "You up for it?"

Gonou pulled up at the door, just for a moment, and his little fist clenched.

He was back the next day, though. "Here," Jien said matter-of-factly, tossing him the extra rag he'd brought. "Make yourself useful."

After more hesitant minutes than Jien had expected, the boy sullenly muttered, 'It's not working."

"Well, of course not, if you do it like that," he said calmly. "Give it a little muscle."

"Muscle," Gonou echoed, turning the word over in his mouth. His voice had an edge to it for the first time when he said, "I will." Jien was glad to hear it, but it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

"Not bad," he said when they were done. Gonou had only managed a couple of pews, but they were scrubbed and bone-dry. His chestnut hair was straggling with sweat and his whole pale face was shell-pink with effort. His narrow chest was heaving and his hands were wound into tight balls around the rag, and for once he didn't look like a vengeful ghost. "Keep this up and I'll let you do the podium someday."

"I hate this room," Gonou hissed, the words seeming to choke themselves out of him without his consent.

"Yeah?" he asked. He liked it, himself. The stained glass was something special. But if the kid didn't like it, he probably had his reasons. "Then make it yours."

"You wanna try sweeping?" he asked the next day. "It's more fun than scrubbing, and then you get to throw all the dirt out the door. Anyway, I only do the pews a couple days a week."

Gonou broke the broom. It wasn't even on purpose.

"Well," Jien said dryly, looking at the stick with it's collection of shattered bristles and into the kid's shuttered, apprehensive face. "How 'bout let's wait awhile before I let you at the windows."

A noise exploded from Gonou's nose. It wasn't exactly a laugh, and his expression didn't change. It still sounded like a victory.

At the end of the next pew-day, Gonou scowled at his three finished rows and Jien's five and coolly announced, "I'm slow." He was out of breath, and his hands were trembling.

"What do you expect?" he shrugged. "You're short. You got short arms. You don't eat enough. You don't play enough." He stretched, getting some of the ache out of his forearms, and added, "You do a good job, though. We've got eight rows left--tell you what, I'll do these seven tomorrow. Just do that first row, and then you can do the podium and the altar."

The two pews went all right, and so did the altar. But Gonou's breath started to hitch when he went to work on the podium. His scrubbing turned violent, and he started to mutter under his breath. Jien put his rag down silently, and waited, listening.

"Liar," Gonou was muttering, and then more loudly, "Liar," and before long he had dropped his rag and was pounding the podium with his fisted knuckles and kicking it with his knees, screaming, "Liar! Liar! LIAR!"

Jien got up there, turned him around roughly by the shoulders. Gonou didn't seem to notice. He just turned his attack on Jien and kept on howling.

"That's it," he said, blocking and blocking and blocking. "Come at me; I can fight back. No, not like that--jeez, you fight like a girl, didn't anybody ever tell you how to punch? Thumb on the outside. That's right. No, not the shins. What are you, a toddler? Go for the ankle. No, swipe, don't kick. Yeah, like that, only try to stay on your feet next time."

"Shut up!" Gonou bawled, and scrambled up to come at him again.

And again.

And again.

Finally, when the boy was reduced to pounding helplessly on the floor with one weak fist, Jien flopped down beside him with a grin, and clapped him on the shoulder. "Not bad for a nunnery brat, shrimp," he said companionably. "You're pretty fast, for a bookworm."

Gonou just lay there and heaved, but he did stop pounding. Eventually, he glared up and barked, "Next time I'll beat you."

"You don't know how," Jien pointed out.

Gonou stewed for a minute, then swallowed and clenched his jaw and demanded, "Show me."

Jien had tea with the Eldest Sister. His hands were starting to dwarf the porcelain, and it shone white against his ruddy, calloused fingers. He knew he wouldn't break it, though, and he liked the look of it. His rough hands might appreciate that sturdy refinement more than a more delicate pair would, he felt, and the tea was always very good.

"You want to teach him to fight?" she asked, looking at him as though she wasn't quite sure what she'd let into her orphanage.

"Well," he said, weighing the question, "he wants me to teach him. And I think I should."

"I really don't think that that's the sort of thing--"

"I didn't mean I wanted to teach him to brawl, Sister," he said patiently. "I meant the Art."

"Oh," she said pensively. "I see. Are you any good?"

"Not really," he shrugged. "Empty-hand isn't my style. But I can teach him the discipline. You know, get him started. It's not like there's time for more than that anyway; I hear some good schools have been making him offers."

"Very good schools," she agreed absently. "He actually asked you for this, you say?"

"Yeah," Jien answered, not mocking her at all. "In actual words."

She tapped her finger meditatively on the rim of her teacup. "Would you also be teaching the other children?"

He shook his head. "I'm no sensei. Anyway, I think this had better be just for him."

There was something terrible about the way Gonou ran when he sprinted. It wasn't terrible the way his distance running was; it wasn't that he wasn't good at it. Jien could practically see the darkness snapping at his heels. He never lasted long, though. Jien thought he just wasn't built for stamina.

One afternoon, though, the boy came to him with dark circles under his eyes and yawning. Jien sighed and sent him off around the yard, expecting him to last about three minutes.

Half an hour later, he was still jogging.

"So?" he demanded when Jien stopped him to point this out, but the news had made him blink.

"Was it the same as yesterday? Did running feel the same?"

Gonou sounded vaguely outraged when he answered, "I wasn't paying attention." Jien wasn't sure if the outrage was for the question itself or just for being forced to talk.

"'Cause you're tired, right? Do you usually pay attention?" The boy shrugged ungraciously, but it was a yes kind of shrug. "We'll start the forms tomorrow."

Chilly green eyes narrowed at him from behind flat glass. "Is that what you were waiting for?"

"Saa ne," Jien said absently. "Come on, you can help me sweep the dorms."

Gonou raised a dubious eyebrow at him, his shoulders relaxing a notch. He almost, almost looked amused, behind the sullen. "You want to give me a broom?"

"You won't break it today," Jien assured him. "And if you do, the mop has a metal handle."

The broom didn't break, but the next day--well, it wasn't a disaster, but neither was it exactly an unqualified success. The only person Jien had ever tried to teach (don't think about it) was a very different kind of student, wild and eager. With him (don't think) the problem was focus and precision.

Gonou was so focused that Jien was still a little unnerved by it, and where Jien was used to looking out for flailing and wild punches, this kid was as stiff as a wooden puppet. Jien kept expecting to hear his joints click.

It was especially painful to watch him try to fall. The only consolation was that he was going to come in tired the next day as well after a night trying to sleep on all the bruises he was earning. At least he was good at remembering the forms. He moved from one to the other without error, although his movements were mechanical and he kept his limbs too close to his body.

"Tomorrow I think we'll start you off running again," Jien decided. "You've gotta loosen up. Here."

Gonou looked down at his hands, at the book that had landed in them. "Poems?"

"Yup. Start running." Gonou nodded, and bent to put the book down. "Uh-uh. I want you to read the first ten poems while you're at it. Memorize the one you like best, and say it for me when you're done."

The kid stared at him. "While I'm running?"

"Yeah."

"I'll bump into people."

"You'd better not. Every person you run into, everything you trip over or bump into, you have to memorize another poem."

Gonou just kept staring. "You're out of your mind."

"You're out of your mind, sensei," he corrected. "Go on, get moving."

He had to yell at him to stop slowing down for the first few days, of course, but after that it started to work better. After a few weeks, Gonou was refusing the poetry and using his running time to study with. He made Jien quiz him, too, although Jien wasn't sure why he bothered, since he almost never got anything wrong. Soon after that, he was dodging though the other kids' ball games. Once he struck out with the palm of his hand, without looking up, and scored a point for the boys' team.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Jien whispered to himself, grinning, "We have a winner."

"But he's still so scary," Xiaohei lamented, one bright day between classes, bringing him water.

Jien sighed. "I know."

"It's not enough," Gonou said abruptly. He turned a flat face on Jien and asked, "Is anything enough?"

"No," he said, surprised into honesty, and then, "What?"

"You have the same eyes as everybody here," the boy said, and Jien nearly choked. "The same bleeding eyes. That's probably why the sisters let you stay. You belong here."

"You're getting observant," he pushed out of a tight chest. The days were getting sultry again, the firs darker, and the occasional leafy tree was stretching into color.

"I saw it as soon as I met you," Gonou said in his frozen, dead voice. "But it's none of my business."

"Oh." After a moment, because you always had to meet the kid three-quarters of the way, he asked, "So why are you asking now?"

Gonou was silent for a moment. Jien could see the words clicking themselves this way and that behind his glasses. "You pretend a lot, but they're not pretending. They cry and then it's over. And the next morning they're laughing again. It's impossible. But you don't cry. So I'm asking you."

"How do you know I don't cry?" he countered.

Instead of looking stymied, as he should have if it had been a grownups-just-don't kind of assumption, Gonou met his eyes levelly. "You don't. But you play with them. And you're only pretending sometimes. So you know both ways."

"I guess."

"I want to kill them all," the boy said in that same, level tone, without changing expressions. "I don't want to want to. They say I have youkai eyes."

"Nothing wrong with youkai," Jien said, his limiters cold in his ear, reminding himself hard that Gonou didn't know he was being offensive.

"But my mother wouldn't know me. My sister would run away. But I still want to." His voice started to climb louder. "They're unfilial! They shouldn't forget, and they forget every day, but everybody tells me I have a bloody face! So what's the right way? Why am I the only one that wants to kill something?"

"'Cause you're lousy at being a kid," Jien said matter-of-factly, and Gonou blinked, unclenched his fists, breathed again. "You gotta live now. Not before they died, not when they died. You can't do it all the time, but mostly. If you live then all the time, you're dead, too."

"Maybe I should be," he glowered.

"Oh? Was it your fault?"

"Yes."

"Oh." He stopped to consider this, and then realized he was being dumb. Just because he was responsible didn't mean he should take somebody else seriously when they said they were. "You're how old again?"

Gonou glared.

"So you killed them, huh? With your own hands? Wanted them dead?"

All he got out of that was the flat look he knew so well. He wasn't discouraged, though. Gonou's best cold stare had This Subject Is Forever Closed all over it, but the mind behind it was one that couldn't leave anything alone.

"And now you want to kill everybody else? Why, for not being them?"

He actually earned himself a blink for that one.

"Or do you just want to kill something? 'Cause I can help you with that."

"I don't need--" Gonou started flatly, then stopped. The considering look he gave Jien then was as close to enjoyment as Jien had ever seen on him. It was a faintly nasty enjoyment, though, and what he said was, "Oh? Do you want to be killed?"

He looked down at the white shirt the sisters had given him. Steel blooming, dark blood blossoming, petals scattered on the floor.

"Not really. Why, do you want to kill me, too?"

"That's a stupid question."

"Oh?" he asked, smiling. How a twelve-year-old could sound so much like his third-grade teacher was beyond him. And was it his imagination, or did he hear just a tinge of the indignation of a serious person whose joke wasn't being laughed at?

"You can't stop thinking about a question like that once it's been asked."

"I can stop thinking about anything," Jien assured him, his mouth twisting wryly to one side. To prove it, he lay down on his back in the stiff grass with the sun on his face, and allowed himself to drift asleep.

Gonou broke early one morning while Jien was washing the windows. He only saw a slice of it--small fists clenched together, booted ankles wrapped tight around the leg of the desk in a state of silent, spiraling fume, and the grey-eyed girl next to him edged as far away as she could, looking about ready to cut and run. He could have pulled Gonou out of class--it would have been irregular, but the teacher was looking spooked herself. He just met Gonou's eyes through the window, though, and tapped his watch without smiling, encouraging him to make it through the morning.

He swung back at lunchtime. The kid hadn't even started getting his books together; he was just braced with all his limbs against the student desk, burning a flaming hole into space with his eyes. Jien took a moment to reassure the teacher (a nice girl. Even Gonou didn't violently dislike her, ordinarily) that he was on top of things, and asked her to excuse the boy for the next period.

She looked at him as though he was crazy, and said, "You can have him all day, Doku-kun. He's disrupting my classroom."

Jien raised an eyebrow. "What'd he do?"

"Nothing."

He bit back a smile. "Ah."

He had to pry Gonou bodily out of the desk, using pressure points to make his hands release. "Relax, kid," he advised, casually hoisting the boy over one shoulder.

"I can't," Gonou spat from between gritted teeth. "Otherwise--"

"Gotcha covered," Jien assured him. "Just hang on another minute."

He took the vibrating boy to the kitchen steps, where he'd put the rolling pin and the elderly watermelons he'd gotten from cook, and set him down. Handing him the rolling pin, he said, "Go ahead."

There was a moment of silence. Gonou stared at the melons. At the rolling pin. At the pristine white path. At Jien. Back to the watermelons and then, incredulously, back at Jien one more time.

"They're evil melons," Jien told him solemnly. "Kill 'em."

"Evil melons," Gonou repeated flatly.

"Well," he said, considering it, "they smell evil. That one in the corner does, anyway."

"Evil. The melons."

"Evil, rotten, stinking melons," he said impatiently. "Destroy them all."

"Evil melons," Gonou choked, and started coughing. Jien was alarmed for a moment, thinking he was seriously ill; it was that kind of deep, wrenching cough.

Then his jaw hung loose. Gonou was laughing.

"Evil melons," the brat choked, and doubled over, his shoulders wrenching silently.

"Right," Jien sighed. "Fine. Go away."

Gonou did, scrambling away with one palm pressed to his mouth and his eyes screwed shut. Xiaohei broke away from the ball game she was playing with a couple of the other girls to ask him if he was all right. He opened his eyes and stared at her impressively, choking out, "The melons are evil. Watch out for them." Then he stumbled off.

"The melons?" she called after him, puzzled.

"Doku-sensei said they were!" he shouted back over his shoulder, still convulsing, and went in to get his lunch.

"What was that about?" one of the girls asked, when Xiaohei came back to them, her face a mask of confusion.

"He said the melons were evil," she said.

There was a short silence. "Huh?" the first girl asked.

"But if Gonou said so," the other one trailed off doubtfully. "I mean, he doesn't joke. And he didn't look good."

"Noooo," Xiaohei agreed, more doubtfully yet. "But he said Doku-sempai told him."

She clearly meant that Jien wasn't above a practical joke or two, but the other girls knew him less well and were deeply impressed. "Doku-sempai said so?" the second girl asked, her eyes widening. "Oh! I wonder how he found out!"

"Um," Xiaohei commented neutrally.

"It's so brave of Doku-sama to find out and warn us," the first girl agreed. She was, Jien was alarmed to notice, starry-eyed. "We'd better tell everybody."

Oh, well, Jien thought, shrugging it off, and stood to bring the melons back to Cook. She'd let him have them because they were on the elderly side, but most of them weren't actually bad yet. She could probably still use them. And at least Gonou didn't look like he was going to explode into a killing spree anytime soon anymore, so Jien could wait until tomorrow to figure out what to do. He went to go help with the laundry and thought no more about it.

Until dinner. He was nearly last in line, and when he came to the fruit tray it was full of cubes of watermelon, full as it was never full by the time he got to it, crisp and seed-speckled and tempting. No meager few scraps for him tonight.

Weird.

But they smelled all right, and none of them was emitting youryouki. If the kids had all taken a sudden dislike to watermelon, that left more for him. He sat down with his plate piled high and tucked in.

A shocked murmur ran around the hall, but he just eyeballed them back. Despite the whispers, they let him eat his rice in peace. It was, not unexpectedly, when he reached for his first slice of melon that his fingers landed on the table instead.

He sighed without looking up, and opened his palm expectantly. One of the girls, the one who had called him 'sama' earlier, was clutching the plate to her chest protectively, vehemently shaking her head. "Doku-sempai, we can't let you!"

"Xiaohei," he appealed.

But Xiaohei, despite having better sense, just widened her grey eyes at him with mischievous helplessness. This was exactly why he'd disliked her at first. She said, "It's too brave of you, Doku-sempai! Don't you know that's a youkai watermelon?"

"Oh, good," he said calmly, making a gimme motion so peremptory that his little fangirl reluctantly handed it over. "Then it's perfect for me."

A few tables over, Gonou, his usual few steps ahead of everybody else, lifted his head. His expression of iced interest didn't look very different from the usual blazing indifference, but it had a bit of a perk behind it.

It occurred to Jien to wonder if any of these kids had ever seen a youkai and known it. Most didn't advertise. So when Xiaohei's other friend asked what he meant, he said, quite matter-of-fact, "Well, I'm youkai, too, so it won't bother me if it knows what's good for it."

And proceeded to eat.

The girls' eyes were wide as six china saucers. "Doku-sempai," his admirer whispered, "you're really a youkai?" Since his mouth was full, he just raised his eyebrows curiously at her. Her eyes went even wider, and he thought for a moment they might be about to have a problem. Then, though, she leaned forward and gushed, "Will you show us?"

"Not at the table," he said decorously, and took another bite. A few tables over, Gonou tilted his head up to let the light flash off his glasses and braced fisted hands over his mouth so no one would see him smirking. Jien smiled and chewed.

"Why not?" Xiaohei wheedled.

"Not polite to change in front of people," he shrugged. "Wear and tear on shirts aside."

"What happens to your shirts, Doku-sempai?" the big-eyed girl asked.

"I outgrow them," he said simply.

When Gonou spoke it wasn't furtively, but he still wasn't exactly shouting. "Maybe," he suggested, the blunt instrument of his voice honing itself almost demure, "Meixu and the others would like a demonstration after dinner, Doku-sensei. I'm sure they'd let you take your shirt off first."

Jien stared at him, along with half the room. "Excuse me," he said to the girls, and moved his tray over to Gonou's table. "Sullen and catty," he drawled, sitting down across from him. "What new face will you show us tomorrow, Cho Gonou?"

"Why watermelons?" Gonou demanded.

"Why not?"

"It was silly."

"Silly or not is up to you, kid."

Gonou frowned up at him. "A thing is what it is."

"Yeah? What happened to 'this world is an illusion'? Anyway, are you human or not? Do you have a brain? Do you have thumbs? A thing is whatever you make it."

The kid mulled over that for a while, then met his eyes. "Are you really youkai?"

"Yeah. You gotta look for the jewelry," he explained, tapping his earcuffs. "Usually doesn't have rocks in."

"They make you human?"

"Look human," he corrected. "They're called limiters."

"Limiters," Gonou repeated, and one side of his mouth quirked up. "Is it less, to be human?"

Jien grinned back. "Well, there's less of me... It limits energies, mostly."

The face Gonou had on was one Jien had never seen him direct at another human being. Thoughtful, penetrating, and without resentment, it was usually aimed at particularly arcane exercises in his workbooks. "I don't see why you'd wear it."

"Most youkai have 'em. It's easier to be seen for who you are when people don't get distracted by what you are. I mean, the moment I say I'm youkai everyone gets interested, right? But I'm not a different Doku."

"Does it feel different, being, ah, limited?"

"Uh... maybe. Yeah, I guess things are a little, I dunno, dulled."

The instantaneous frosting-over of jade eyes was the only warning he had before Gonou whaled him with the tray. "I thought you had something to teach me," the boy said coldly into the sudden shocked silence, rising and gathering his dishes together. "But you're just a cheat."

Clutching his abused jaw and blinking away the smarting tears, Jien gaped after him from the floor and complained, "Ow!"

It was a week before Gonou was done making it up to the sisters for that incident. The moment he walked out of his last afternoon's punishment, Jien met him at the door and gave him a no-nonsense box to the ears. He scowled down into the dazed, blinking eyes as the Eldest Sister hid her smile, and said, "That's for my jaw."

"All right," Gonou muttered resentfully, scrubbing at his abused ears like a little monkey.

"If you weren't a kid, I'd have given you interest, too," he said sternly. "You want to fight someone, you challenge. Ambushes are for bandits." That got him a whole-body flinch and a burning, too-bright, glare, so he let the subject drop. "Come on outside. Your sensei's gonna show you something."

"I meant what I--"

"Get a move on, shrimp," he said amiably, steering the kid out with a firm hand in the middle of his back. Gonou scowled, but allowed himself to be propelled.

Jien took him out to their usual training spot and sprawled out on the grass. Gonou sat more primly, as through sharing the ground with Jien was contaminating his pants. Somehow managing not to laugh at him, Jien said, "Watch this," and took off his limiters.

After the luxurious, stretching moment of 'Oh, there I am' was over, Jien remembered that he should have taken his shirt off first. He looked down at the buttons on the grass and the ragged seams at his shoulders and said, "Oops."

"Oh, please," Gonou said, looking as though he was savoring the moment, "don't be stupid just for my sake."

"I think I'd better not answer that one," Jien agreed wryly, and took in a happy breath of clean autumn air. "I forget how good things can smell."

Gonou looked at him consideringly for a long moment, and finally flicked a finger at his recently tapered ear. "Do you hear better with those?"

"All my senses work better." He listened. "There's a card game going on in your dorm. Do you play?"

"There's no point. I always win."

"Sure, you do," Jien condescended. "Don't worry, I'll teach you sometime."

Gonou slid him an odd look, but said only, "Is this what you wanted to show me?"

"Nah. Here." He tucked the limiters into Gonou's palm, careful with his long, sharp nails, but Gonou didn't even neem to notice. "Try them on." The boy blinked up at him, and he drawled, "You were so sure they do so much--go ahead. Try 'em out."

After a moment's uncertainty, Gonou made a huffing noise and fumbled the silver tabs onto his ear. Jien watched him, interested to see if anything would happen. He hoped the shrinking effect wouldn't carry over; the little dwarf might vanish.

"Oh," Gonou said uncertainly, his eyes going swimmy. He stumbled to his feet, tottered a moment, and fell back down on his skinny butt. "Oh--that's... nh...nnngh...." He curled up on his side, wheezing, the long grass brushing his lashes, standing yellow against his glazed eyes, and his ribcage heaving like a racehorse.

Alarmed, Jien plucked the cuffs off him, picked him up by the shoulders and shook him roughly. He wasn't terribly surprised at the falling; he himself always felt more sure of where he was when the limiters were off. The wheezing and gasping were disturbing, though. "Hey! You all right?"

"How..." the kid pushed out, much rattled, "how can you live like that, Doku-sensei?"

"I think it must be different. You looked like you couldn't breathe."

"No--and no balance, like the world was gone, the ground and all the air, and just nothing at all--like that time..."

"How did they die?" Jien asked gently. "Bandits?"

Pulled back to himself by the question, Gonou speared him with a narrow-eyed look, and said, "I was mistaken when I said you were cheating."

"All right," he sighed. Mount Cho was still unassailable. "You ready to try again, then?"

Warily, Gonou asked, "Will it involve watermelons?"

"Nah--I thought we'd try something else this time."

"Apples," Gonou said flatly.

"Sure," Jien smiled down at him, and flicked the owlish spectacles. "I see now where I went wrong with the melons."

Gonou favored him with an expectant blink that might have been taken for polite, coming from someone else's eyes.

"You aren't really the brain-someone-with-a-big-stick type," he explained.

"Is your jaw feeling any better?" the brat asked with a pointed lack of expression.

"And you want me to believe you'd let those bandits off with a cardboard tray to the chin?"

"Oh," Gonou said after a moment, without expression. "No. No, I don't think so."

"No," he agreed. "A blow to the head isn't going to do a lot for you." It was his private opinion that a good solid kick in the pants at the right time would have done wonders for his little buddy, but he left that kind of thing up to the sisters. "So, apples."

"Apples," he repeated, dubiously.

"Apples. Here." He handed his belt knife over. Gonou turned it in his hands, a bit big for his wrists, and turned his eyes up with a skeptical, world-weary 'what now' look. "Whatever you want. Gut it. Rip the core out with your fingers, if you can. Peel it. Pull the skin off with your teeth. You can dice it, crush it, shred it, cut it into translucent slivers. I have red food dye, if you think it'll help. Be creative."

"Oh," Gonou said after a moment, very precisely. He turned the blade up, let the light trail along the edge, flash off his glasses. "Yes. Yes, I see. Well. Let's start small, then..."

"I'll be, uh, over there," Jien said hastily, and made a barely dignified retreat.

They shifted practice back half an hour so Gonou could get a little of the distraction worked out of his system. It worked fairly well, too--when Jien came back from scrubbing the kitchen he found a student who moved less like rusted joints of metal.

One day as he was leaving to pick the kid up, the cook asked him where he kept running off to in the afternoons. "Orchard," he explained with a wry smile. "Gotta pick up the spook."

Amused, she asked, "Is that where my apples have been disappearing to? All right; Mother knows he doesn't eat enough at meals."

"Oh, he's not eating them," he assured her. "He needs a punching bag, and apples are cheap, I figured."

She blinked flatly at him, barked, "That's pointless," and strode out of the quiet kitchen and towards the orchard.

"Not really," he protested, trailing after her in alarm through the crisp air. "He talks and everything.

"That's not what I meant," she snapped. "You know better than this, Doku-kun. You're just being dim."

"Hey," he complained mildly, following her now more out of interest.

He caught up with her again as she seized Gonou by the ear. She just marched past him without so much as a nod, lugging the hapless boy along, punctuating her steps with a litany of what the wasted apples could have been used for. Gonou's eyes met his in a kind of appalled, desperate, endurance.

All Jien could do was shrug at him as they passed. He lingered in the clearing for a minute when they'd gone, looking over the decimated pile of fruit. Skinned, sliced, minced, crushed, gored, carved like weathered rock... the kid was a savage.

Jien sighed. Enough ill will had gone into those apples that he wouldn't be surprised if the ants and wasps they attracted turned bad somehow. More than one species of animal youkai had started out that way, from an unintended curse. He hadn't thought of it before, but with that rotting heap of bad qi smacking him between the eyes... He took off his limiters, and opened his hand in the way that made his sword.

Fifteen minutes later, the ground around him was churned and well mixed with applesauce, and he was stomping it flat again. Not a single seed had escaped the decimation--no dark youkai trees next fall, please--and his sword was about as sharp as the swell of a spoon. That was all right, though. It would form whole again.

The real problem would be to get one of the nuns out here to pray over the site without getting smacked for being, as the cook had said, dim.

He should go do that. And rescue the kid.

Shower first.

To Jien's amusement, the orphanage suffered through about ten days of poorly chopped meat and badly mixed mantou before Gonou hit his stride. He didn't suffer much, himself; Jien could eat anything. Anyway, the difference in his student was so pronounced he wouldn't have cared even if food had been important to him.

It had taken about five minutes after Gonou saw people eating the buns he'd helped prepare before his shoulders dropped a millimeter or so. And a couple of days later, when he saw them shooting pleased looks at their plates, his chin lifted so far up from its usual place halfway down his neck that his eyes almost looked like they were behind his glasses instead of on top of them. Before long he was getting through more pews with only the occasional petulant kick to the bottom of the pulpit, and both his running and his exercises smoothed out.

"You like cooking a lot, huh?" Jien asked, smiling into the window he was polishing and watching the kid's reflection.

"It's not that," Gonou said, lifting one shoulder briefly as he swept. "I could do anything in there."

"It's good to make people smile," he said, his own lips curling up.

"It's not that," Gonou said again, his miniature brow furrowing. "I could do anything. I could burn the food, or put something in it. I might be caught, but I could do it. If they're smiling, I allow it."

Jien sighed.

Gonou was still talking. "And it helps more, because... when I help you, it doesn't make anything happen. Nobody really cleaned the pews before you came, and they may like it now, but if you stopped it wouldn't really matter. If nobody cooked, it would matter, and if someone else did it it would be different."

"So it's a power thing."

For the first time since Jien had met him, the kid looked almost abashed. "It doesn't sound very good if you say it like that, does it?" he admitted with a sour little smile that twisted ruefully up one side of his mouth.

"Depends," Jien said, and jumped down from the ladder. He drew his sword. "Now, I--"

"Where did that come from?" Gonou asked, fascinated, his eyes wide with the ruthless curiosity of a little boy who'd turn over any rock, reach into any pocket, or tear apart any universe to find out why the sky was blue. Jien wouldn't have pegged him for the type, somehow, but, well...

There were guys who looked good frowning. Jien had seen plenty of girls look right through him to a scowl and a swagger, and being an easygoing type had just shrugged it off. He'd understood perfectly, and sometimes he'd returned the favor and looked through them.

Even on an angry person a scowl could be natural and attractive, but Gonou wasn't like that. He scared the other kids because his fury froze his face to an unnatural vacuum. This was what looked right on him; this was his fire. No wonder school didn't help him--no matter how hard he worked at it or how much he excelled, being spoonfed answers was against his nature.

The best learner. The worst student.

"It's a youkai thing," Jien said dismissively. "Instinctive. You wanna go study qi use in history at university, be my guest. Trying to make a point here."

Gonou looked up at him impatiently, pressed his lips together, and settled back on his palms.

"Right, so this is power right here, right? Big heavy pointy thing, comes when I call it, sharpens itself, can't be used by anyone but me. Even if I couldn't use it well, it's a Useful Object."

Green eyes flickered at him. If not amused, the brat was at least tolerant.

"Now, I can do a couple good things with this. I can cut myself wood with it, and then I'm self-reliant. I can kill my enemies and I'm strong, I can kill China's enemies and I'm righteous. I can knock people out with the flat, or make a big show out of not using it, and that makes me benevolent. I can use it to till the earth, and you could call that virtuous. I can defend a village, and that's generous." He could use a sword to defend his family with, and what do you call that, Mother? "What do you think is the best way to use it?"

"You want me to say not at all," Gonou said flatly, looking bored again.

"Now he's a mind-reader, too," Jien announced to no-one in particular, widening his eyes as a man impressed. Gonou looked annoyed and he grinned, reaching down to ruffle the kid's hair. The kid looked more annoyed yet and dodged a little, but didn't actually punch him. "Not at all? I'd call that 'virtuous.' Capital V. A little obnoxious, you think?"

"A little," Gonou agreed blandly, his expression pointing out that he'd never seen Jien use it.

"Now, see, what'd be really obnoxious'd be if I made a big point of not using it. Then I don't know whether it'd be more obnoxious if, suppose the nunnery was attacked, if I did fight with it or I didn't."

"Would you?" he asked, not as though he cared about the answer.

"Bet your a--uh, ears I would," Jien said, his emphasis suffering a little. "A tool's made to be used. I've cut the grass with it, too."

Long hours in the sun, grainy stalks of grass to his knee, dodging and blocking the scythe-on-a-stick as someone got frustrated with wading hip-deep, got competitive. A big job for a little squirt--

Don't think about it.

"Anyway, that's my answer. How you can apply it, I don't know. But I do know this--when I hear you talk about controlling whether people smile... I gotta say, kid, that makes me nervous. That's the benevolence of the tyrant."

"How is it different," Gonou asked coldly, "from that?"

Jien followed his finger to the playground, from where four girls were pretty obviously browbeating someone--he couldn't see through their backs to who it was. He could get up and do something about it, but those didn't look like any of the girls who would take his interference as a reproach rather than a postponement of their fun by an interfering adult. Whoever it was would have to act on their own first.

"Well, first of all, it's a different kind of power," he said. "When you have a skill--that's not something anyone can take away from you. It may not get you respect, depending on what it is, but use it right, sell it right and you can survive. Learn from Cook and you'll never need to waste money on takeout. Learn from me and your wife'll never hate you 'cause you don't do your share around the house."

Gonou lifted a skeptical, prepubescant eyebrow at him.

"This time next year," Jien promised him with a slinky grin, "believe it or not, girls will rock your world. And if not next year, the year after that."

The other eyebrow lifted, more skeptically yet.

"Fine, don't believe it. Just don't say I didn't warn you. But what that is, is someone who has no skills and can't survive, convincing the world otherwise through sheer force of will. You think those girls have power?"

"They do. Here."

"Maybe, but only because you kids give it to them. Well--maybe not you. You think they're anything without that?"

"To be honest," Gonou said in a cold and careless tone, "I don't think much of them at all. Except that I notice you're still over here."

"I could stop it now, sure," Jien said. "I can't stop anything once they get inside. Better they should do whatever they're going to do in front of witnesses they want to keep looking clean for."

Gonou considered that. After a minute or so, his shoulders dropped a little, relaxing. "Do you think they're, uh, 'anything'?"

"Couldn't tell you," he shrugged. "I don't know 'em that well. But I can tell you for sure, they don't think they are, or they wouldn't need to act like that. I mean, look at you. You're a nasty sonofa--agun when you want to be and I know for a fact you hate half those kids' guts."

"Half?" his brat asked dryly.

Grinning, he decided not to touch that one. "But you don't do that. Why?"

"It's pointless."

"It's pointless. Yeah. For you it's pointless. You already know you're worth more than that. Why play, when you already know you've won?"

"Pointless," Gonou repeated, looking as though he thought he understood something.

"Not if the game's worth something," Jien said, sighing. "I hope you find that out sometime."

"You mean, if there's a stake in it?"

"Goal-oriented," Jien mourned. "That's it; enough lolling around. Do me some laps before we get started. And this time, I want you to write a poem."

Gonou gaped.

"Yeah, you. About something you see while you're running. And don't think I won't check with your teacher to see if it's a real poem, either!"

September cracked the world open, and a good thing it was early in autumn; any later in the year and Jien would have had to stay another winter.

Nothing dramatic happened in his own life; no hordes of righteous relatives-on-his-mother's-side or relentless law-enforcement agents came pounding on the orphanage's door. A new student came for the new semester, that was all.

He thought he met this new kid after school one soggy day. He thought it was a new boy pounding up to him like an enthusiastic puppy. He didn't realize until the boy had run to him and gripped his sleeves and gasped out, "Oh--oh, Doku-sensei--oh..." for nearly a full minute and reeled away again that it was Gonou.

"Holy fuck," he blurted, wide-eyed, and didn't even hear the shocked giggles of the kids around him. "The hell was that?"

At dinner the same wildly-smiling graceful green-eyed stranger caught him by the sleeve again as he came out of the lunch line and dragged him over to...

...Another wildly-smiling graceful green-eyed stranger. This one had a braid. Jien had a headache.

"Doku-sensei," Gonou panted, still sounding like he was about to faint, "she isn't dead!"

"So I see," he said, amused despite his alarm. "Your sister, I take it."

"Cho Kanan," the girl said, holding out a very familiar hand for him to shake. She turned a besotted gaze on her brother, which he returned twofold. "We're twins."

"So I see," he repeated. There were chills crawling down his spine now. He'd only seen one person with a look like that in her eyes before, and it definitely wasn't healthy. "Pleased to meet you."

They tried to talk to him, he gave them that. And when she came along the one time that week Gonou managed to show up for practice, she tried not to interfere, and Gonou tried to concentrate. But it didn't get better.

"But don't you think leaving is a little extreme?" the Eldest Sister asked him, distressed.

"I can't watch this," he said flatly. "There aren't a lot of places it can go. I--I'm not sticking around to see which." His blunt nails dug into the skin of his palm. "He was getting to a point where he could have really been something, Sister. Now he's not going anywhere she can't follow."

"But the other children adore you, too."

"They'll live. But I've seen that look before, Sister. It's not sane, and it's not going anywhere good, and the only way to stop it's to separate them."

"That would be cruel," she said, her eyes puckering in grief just at the thought.

"It'd kill 'em," he said flatly. "And when that kid breaks, you can bet anything you want someone's going down with him. I'm out. I'm glad I came, glad I could help, and I'll always be grateful to you and the other Sisters, but I'm out now."

The kids threw him a party. It was sweet of them. Meixu nearly swooned when he showed up youkai, which everyone got a kick out of. He hadn't done it for her sake. Even Gonou showed up, all wrapped up in his sister and both of them looking dazed as ever. They were both almost friendly with the other kids, in a detached kind of way, him following her lead and them going along with it because she was too nice a kid for even Jien to dislike.

Jien tried to warn him; took him aside and said, "Listen, I really am happy for you, but you've gotta remember--the world that gave her back is the same world that took her away. You can't--you can't throw yourself into someone else like this without paying for it later."

Gonou met his eyes squarely for the first time in two weeks, and there was that implacable ember at the bottom of them, right where it should be. Jien felt a little relieved, until Gonou said, "I won't let anything happen to her. Ever. Not ever again."

"That's not a promise anyone can keep," he tried again, frustrated.

"I'm keeping it," Gonou said coldly.

Jien sighed, and handed him a little package. "Keep these, too," he said. "Try and remember: there's no such thing as an easy fix."

When his name wasn't poison any more, when he was the sword who couldn't be turned and Houtou castle lay steaming around them, a cool figure in green stepped through the smoke and looked down at them, at Yaone bent over Kougaiji's head in his lap.

"Hakkai-dono," she said distractedly with only a brief smile up for him, "excuse me, but you're in my sun."

So the man made light. "Forgive me," he said, holding his glowing hand up for her, and lied, "I know sunlight would be better. But if you don't mind, Yaone-san, Sanzo is, ah, somewhat anxious to get going. I wanted to talk to Dokugakuji-san for a moment before we leave, if you can spare him."

"She could spare me faster," Doku drawled, "if you'd help out."

"Oh, of course, it's very thoughtless of me," he said, smiling in an embarrassed sort of way. "Unfortunately, Gojyo has threatened to tie me to the bottom of the Jeep and allow Goku to drive it over the next riverbank if I 'knock myself out showing off' again, and, well, Sanzo looked as though he'd enjoy it, and in any case I suspect that Kougaiji-san would get huff--ah, wouldn't care to shoulder the obligation, and so..."

Yaone giggled, by which Doku understood that Kou really was going to be all right, so he awkwardly scooped his prince's head up and shoved a tattered banner under it for a makeshift cushion, and followed Hakkai over to what had been a door once.

After a long silence, the man turned to him and asked, "Do you think Miss Lilin would appreciate our condolences on the loss of her parents?"

Doku shrugged. "Lilin's not a dumb kid," he said. "She knows what's what."

"Ah," Hakkai said, and smiled ruefully. "She's fortunate, then."

"She's got Kou," he explained.

"Kougaiji-san doesn't walk alone," the man said, a schoolteacher's faint, encouraging reproof in his smile. Doku's lips quirked with the irony. "Doku-san--I was never able to thank you, you know. For back then."

He waved a hand, smiling absently at his own limiters. "Forget it. Glad I could help."

"You couldn't," Hakkai said, and the flat tone was so ghost-familiar that Doku's head whipped around to stare at him. He knew that tight smile, too. Cho Hakkai was eternally freakier-than-thou, but not usually like this anymore. "I'm afraid that person was beyond saving. Although it was kind of you to try."

He blinked. "For those, then?" He gestured at the cuffs.

"That debt repaid itself," he said, and this smile, though still tight, was more natural, more rueful. "The first person I met--afterwards--believe me, Doku-san, you're glad I had them. Then, and when the Wave came."

"Well?" he asked, amused. He didn't know Hakkai very well, but Gonou had never taken this long to get down to business.

"For Gojyo," Hakkai said, and turned. His face, when Doku could see it, was full of something that didn't belong to earth. But this time it made Doku blink and swallow, not shudder away. This time it pulled his lips up in answer to that transcendent light, and the blood it called to his heart pulsed only a few meters away. "I don't care why. But I thought you might like to know--someone will always thank you for Gojyo."

"You do what you have to," he said gruffly, looking awkwardly away. "Thanks for taking care of him."

"You must believe," Hakkai said earnestly, smiling as though it were only a pleasantry, "that it's my pleasure."

Doku looked back at him then, met his eyes. "You're doing that thing again," he accused. "You know better now."

"That's all right," the brat assured him cheerfully with that joyful, transcendent look again, and when he spoke again Doku could almost taste for himself the sweetness of the words in his mouth. "Sanzo would shoot me before I could do any serious damage."

"This is a good thing?" Doku asked, raising an eyebrow.

Hakkai laughed lightly at him, and drifted off. Before he was more than a few steps away, though, he turned with a more sober smile and said, "In any case, Gojyo can take care of himself. ...Except," he added prosaically, tilting his head to one side in consideration, "in the matter of beating the rugs out every so often and suchlike."

He nodded once, slowly, absorbing that. Then he nodded again, and said, "Good to know."

"Isn't it?" he heard Hakkai murmur behind him, sounding really very pleased about it.

Doku smiled to himself, and went back to help with Kou.

[end]