Together
dark heroNeither of them spoke much on the way home, which by itself was enough for Nezu to understand that Segu was having as much difficulty processing what they had learned as he was. Silence had never been particularly unusual for him, but Segu normally filled the empty space without appearing to notice she was doing it, commenting on traffic, complaining about school, answering messages, showing him things on her phone he had never asked to see, or simply starting conversations about whatever happened to enter her mind. This time, she remained beside him with her head turned toward the window, watching the city pass beyond the glass while Nezu made no attempt to interrupt her.
He had too much to think about himself.
Akane’s apology had answered questions that had remained unresolved for two years, yet somehow those answers had only produced larger ones. What had happened at the school had consequences far beyond the police investigation they had spent so long trying to understand. Riku could disappear from sight. Rin possessed animal ears and a tail that were unquestionably real. Weapons could appear from nothing, people could do things that contradicted everything Nezu understood about the world, and apparently there were rules governing all of it, rules important enough that Akane could not explain them and dangerous enough that learning too much at the wrong time was apparently a risk in itself.
Then there was the part that prevented Nezu from treating any of it as merely Akane’s problem.
Eventually, he and Segu would have to leave too.
Akane hadn’t explained where they would go, when they would go, why leaving was necessary, or even what leaving actually meant. Nezu disliked incomplete information, but incomplete information was normally temporary. A missing fact could be searched for, a person could be questioned, evidence could be compared until whatever was absent became obvious. This was different. They had finally found people who possessed the answers, only to be told that those answers could not be given to them.
Nezu glanced toward Segu. Her face was visible in the reflection of the window, and although she had barely moved since they left, he recognized the tension in her expression.
She was angry.
That, at least, he understood.
When the car reached the Brown mansion, Segu opened the door before Steve had completely finished parking.
“Segu.”
“I know,” she answered immediately.
Steve looked back at her. “You know what?”
“That you’re going to complain about me opening the door before you finished parking.”
“I was going to say you forgot your bag.”
Segu stopped halfway out of the car and looked down. Her schoolbag remained on the floor.
“Oh.”
Steve handed it to her without comment.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She climbed out, and Steve watched her walk toward the mansion before looking at Nezu.
Nezu met his eyes.
“I’m not asking.”
“That would be advisable.”
By the time Nezu entered the house, Segu was already halfway upstairs. She didn’t say anything until they reached his room, waiting while he opened the door before following him inside and closing it behind them. Kuro remained asleep inside Nezu’s bag, which he had set down beside the desk, and responded to their arrival with nothing more than a faint twitch from within the fabric.
Nezu had barely placed his bag beside the desk when Segu spoke.
“We have to leave.”
There had been no attempt to build toward the subject, and Nezu hadn’t expected one.
“Eventually.”
“I know.”
Segu crossed the room and stopped near the window. “Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
She turned toward him. “Do we come back?”
That one made him hesitate, although only because he searched through everything Akane had said one more time before reaching the same conclusion.
“I don’t know.”
Segu released a short laugh without any amusement behind it. “Great.”
Nezu watched her for a moment. “You’re angry.”
“Of course I’m angry.”
“With Akane?”
“I don’t know.” Segu folded her arms, then immediately shook her head as though dissatisfied with her own answer. “Maybe. A little.”
“She isn’t responsible for whatever is happening to us.”
“I know.”
“She also said there are things she can’t explain.”
“I know.”
“Then—”
“I know, Nezu.”
He stopped.
Segu turned back toward the window and remained there for a moment before continuing more quietly. “That’s what makes it worse. I believe her.”
That wasn’t the answer Nezu had expected.
“I know she isn’t hiding things because she thinks it’s funny. I know whatever happened at the school caused problems for her too, and I know she has to leave again because of what happened that night. I know she was actually sorry.” Segu rubbed a hand across her forehead. “So I can’t even properly blame her.”
“You could blame her improperly.”
Segu slowly turned her head.
Nezu reconsidered his contribution. “That was intended to help.”
“It didn’t.”
“I noticed.”
For the briefest moment, some of the tension left her expression, but it returned almost immediately.
“I don’t even know who I’m supposed to be angry with. That’s the problem. There are apparently all these people and all these rules controlling something that is happening to us, and we don’t even know enough to understand who made those rules.”
“We don’t know that anyone made them.”
“That’s not helping either.”
“It wasn’t intended to. It’s an important distinction.”
“Nezu.”
He stopped again.
Segu sighed and sat on the edge of his bed, causing Kuro to open one eye before deciding she wasn’t sufficiently important to justify waking up.
“We don’t know what we are.”
Nezu’s attention sharpened.
“That is what actually bothers me,” she continued. “Something happened to you. Something happened to Kuro. There are things happening to me too, and Akane clearly knows what at least some of it means. Rin knows. Riku probably knows. Everyone in that room knew more about what is happening to us than we do.”
Nezu sat beside her, leaving enough room that Kuro remained between them.
“We know some things.”
“We know almost nothing, Nezu. We know Akane can do things that shouldn’t be possible. We know Riku can disappear. We know Rin has ears and a tail for some reason. We know people can make weapons appear out of nowhere, and apparently there are rules about all of it. That’s it.”
“Akane said learning more could be dangerous.”
“I believe her about that too.”
Nezu looked at her.
Segu’s frustration became more obvious. “Stop looking surprised every time I say I believe her. I’m angry, not stupid.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Your face did.”
“My face didn’t move.”
“It doesn’t need to.”
Nezu decided not to pursue that particular argument.
Segu looked down at Kuro and ran her fingers slowly along his back. “They treat us like children.”
“You remember what Rin said about cubs?”
Nezu looked at her.
“She was referring to offspring.”
“I know. But after everything Akane told us, I started thinking the word fit us too.”
Nezu considered that.
“In what way?”
“We’re kept in the dark because knowing too much is supposedly dangerous. We’re told where we’re going, when we’re going, and nobody even pretends we have a choice. They’re treating us like cubs.”
Nezu was quiet for a moment.
Segu shook her head.
“What’s next? They give us matching collars and scratch us behind the ears?”
Kuro’s ear moved beneath her hand.
“That was not an invitation.”
The ear settled again.
Segu sighed. “They know what is happening to our bodies. They know why Akane had to disappear. They know what that thing she used at school was. They know what rules she broke and where she has to go because of it. They probably know what is going to happen to us too.”
She looked directly at Nezu.
“And we don’t.”
There was nothing he could say to contradict that.
Segu was quiet for several seconds before leaning forward, her elbows resting against her knees. “I’m seventeen. Someone just told me that at some point I’m going to have to leave my home, and I don’t even know why.”
“She didn’t specifically say home.”
“What else does leave mean?”
“There are multiple possible interpretations.”
“Do any of them make you feel better?”
Nezu considered the possibilities.
“No.”
“Exactly.”
Her frustration had begun to fade, but Nezu quickly realized that wasn’t an improvement. The anger had been easier to deal with than whatever was replacing it.
“What happens to school?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“My friends?”
“I don’t know.”
“University?”
Again, he had no answer.
Segu looked at him. “You’ve thought about university, right?”
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”
Nezu reconsidered. “No.”
That produced a faint laugh. “Of course you haven’t.”
“There was no urgency.”
The moment the words left him, Segu’s expression changed, and Nezu understood why.
There had been no urgency.
School would eventually end, and something would follow it. University was the most likely possibility, although work was equally available if he decided he preferred it. There had never been any need to determine the exact shape of his future because there had always been time to decide later. Tomorrow would follow today, another year would follow this one, and the things around him would remain sufficiently stable that he could make those decisions whenever they became relevant.
Now somebody had placed an invisible boundary somewhere across that future.
Nezu simply couldn’t see where it was.
“I had plans,” Segu said.
He turned toward her.
“Not proper plans. I didn’t have my whole life mapped out or anything, but I thought about university. I thought about getting my own place eventually.”
Nezu’s head moved slightly.
Segu noticed immediately. “Eventually.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t need to.”
He ignored that.
“I thought about travelling too. Maybe with friends, maybe alone. Just going somewhere because I wanted to. Doing normal things.”
Normal.
Nezu looked around his room. His desk was exactly where it had been that morning. Books occupied the shelves. His computer sat waiting for him. Kuro had returned to sleep between them. Somewhere downstairs, Diana was probably working or speaking to someone, entirely unaware that her children had returned home wondering how long it would remain their home.
Segu followed his gaze.
“This,” she said quietly. “I mean this. This house. School. My friends. Mom shouting upstairs because dinner is ready.”
Nezu’s attention returned to her.
“What happens to Mom?”
He had already considered several interpretations of what Akane had told them, but none provided an answer to that question. Nothing indicated Diana would be involved. Nothing indicated she wouldn’t. Nothing told them whether leaving was permanent, temporary, voluntary, or something they would eventually want themselves.
“I don’t know.”
“Does she come with us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can she?”
“I don’t know.”
Segu swallowed before asking the next question. “Can we tell her?”
That was worse.
Nezu looked toward the closed door. Diana was somewhere beyond it, perhaps already thinking about what they would have for dinner. She had no idea that there was another part of the world her children had apparently belonged to without knowing it themselves.
“We can’t tell her yet.”
Segu laughed bitterly. “Of course we can’t.”
“We don’t know enough. She’ll ask questions we can’t answer, and that will only make her worry.”
“I know, Nezu.”
He stopped.
“She spent two years worrying about us,” Segu continued. “After the school, after Akane disappeared, after everything that happened to you. Things were finally becoming normal again.”
Normal.
For most of Nezu’s life, normality had seemed synonymous with predictability, and predictability had usually been boring. Now, for the first time, the possibility of losing it made the word feel considerably more valuable.
“She thinks we’re okay,” Segu whispered.
“We are.”
Her eyes moved toward him.
Nezu corrected himself. “We are currently okay.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
They remained silent for a while, and when Segu eventually stood, the anger returned with her.
“They keep deciding things for us.”
Nezu watched her begin pacing slowly across the room.
“We can’t know this because it’s dangerous. We can’t ask that because we’re not ready. Akane decides what she can tell us. Rin decides we’re cubs who need to be protected. Riku decides when something is dangerous enough to interfere, and now someone, somewhere, has apparently decided that eventually we’re leaving too.”
“We don’t know that someone decided—”
“That’s not the point!”
Her voice broke on the final word.
Segu turned away immediately.
That stopped Nezu far more effectively than shouting ever could.
She wiped quickly beneath one eye, visibly annoyed at herself. “I hate this.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes.”
Segu turned back.
Nezu held her gaze. “I hate it too.”
She stared at him.
He had become familiar enough with his emotions recently to recognize this one without needing to search for a definition. He hated not knowing. He hated that other people possessed information about Segu that he didn’t. He hated that their future apparently contained obligations neither of them had agreed to. He hated that Diana might be one of the things they were expected to leave behind.
Most of all, he hated that there was currently nothing he could do about any of it.
Segu watched him for several seconds before asking, “Are you scared?”
The answer that would once have come automatically almost did.
No.
Nezu stopped it.
He thought about the mansion, Diana, school, Kuro, Segu’s friends, Akane leaving again and the impossible world that had apparently existed beside their own for their entire lives.
Then he thought about Segu.
“Yes.”
Her eyes widened.
There had been a time when Nezu’s fear had been exceptionally simple. Segu was in danger or she wasn’t. Almost nothing else qualified.
This was different.
“Of leaving?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Of whatever is happening to us?”
“Partially.”
Segu waited.
Nezu knew what she wanted without needing her to ask again.
“I don’t know what happens to us.”
Her brow furrowed. “Us?”
“You and me.”
“Akane said we’re both going.”
“Yes.”
“Then what—”
“She didn’t say together.”
Segu became still.
Nezu continued because the possibility existed regardless of whether either of them liked hearing it. “We don’t know why we have to leave, where we have to go, or whether the same thing is happening to both of us. We don’t know what determines any of it. There is no reason to assume we’ll necessarily remain together.”
“Nezu…”
“We don’t know whether they’ll separate us.”
“Stop.”
He did.
The anger had disappeared from Segu’s face completely.
Nezu preferred it when she was angry.
“Is that what you’ve been thinking about?”
“Among other things.”
“You idiot.”
“That doesn’t make the possibility less likely.”
“Not that.”
Segu crossed the small distance between them and took his hand.
Nezu looked down at their fingers before returning his attention to her.
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“That isn’t what I want.”
“I know.”
“You can’t guarantee that we’ll—”
“I know.”
“Then—”
“I know, Nezu.”
She tightened her grip.
“Whatever this is, wherever they expect us to go, we’re going together.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
“Then you can’t promise it.”
“Yes, I can.”
“That isn’t how promises work.”
“It is now.”
There were dozens of reasons her promise might prove impossible to keep. Circumstances did not require permission. Rules would not disappear because Segu disliked them, and if whatever awaited them made separation unavoidable, determination alone might accomplish nothing.
Nezu considered explaining all of that.
Instead, his fingers closed around hers.
“Okay.”
Segu blinked. “Okay?”
“Yes.”
“That was suspiciously easy.”
“I can argue if you’d prefer.”
“No.”
“Then why—”
“Shut up.”
Nezu did.
Segu remained in front of him for a few seconds before leaning forward and resting her forehead against his shoulder. The gesture was familiar enough that Nezu barely needed to think before raising his free arm around her.
They had done this countless times when they were younger. After nightmares, after arguments, after Segu had injured herself doing something Nezu had specifically told her not to do, and sometimes simply because she had decided she wanted to. Nezu had always understood what the gesture meant, even when he hadn’t understood why people needed it.
This time was different.
He wanted her there too.
The realization came without requiring analysis, and his arm tightened slightly around her.
Segu noticed.
She always did.
“We’ll have to tell Mom eventually,” she murmured against him.
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Neither do I.”
“She’ll worry.”
“Yes.”
“She might try to stop us.”
“Yes.”
Segu remained silent for a moment.
“I hope she does.”
Nezu understood exactly what she meant.
“So do I.”
A quiet laugh escaped her, the first one since they had left that contained no anger or bitterness.
Kuro apparently decided he had tolerated being excluded for long enough. He stood, stretched extravagantly, crossed the bed and jumped directly onto Nezu’s back.
Nezu lurched forward enough that Segu had to catch him.
“Kuro.”
The cat climbed toward his shoulder with considerably more confidence than his increasing size justified.
“You are becoming too heavy for this.”
Kuro ignored him.
Segu scratched beneath his chin. “He’s coming too.”
Nezu looked at her. “What?”
“When we leave.”
“We don’t know whether animals—”
“He’s coming.”
“Segu.”
“He’s family.”
Kuro began purring.
Nezu looked at him suspiciously. “That is emotional manipulation.”
“It’s working.”
Nezu stared at Kuro for another moment before conceding. “Fine.”
Segu smiled. “Mom too.”
“That may be more difficult.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“We don’t have enough information.”
“Then we’ll get it.”
“We were explicitly told there are things we shouldn’t—”
“I know what we were told.”
Segu finally stepped away, although she didn’t release his hand.
“We don’t have to know everything tonight.”
Every instinct Nezu possessed disagreed with that statement.
Segu apparently saw it on his face.
“We know one thing.”
“What?”
“That we’re not doing it alone.”
Nezu looked at their joined hands, then at Kuro sitting on his shoulder, before returning his attention to Segu.
It wasn’t enough information. Not remotely.
He still didn’t know what was happening to them, what Akane and the others truly were, what rules governed the world they had accidentally discovered, or why those rules apparently applied to him and Segu. He didn’t know where they would eventually have to go, when they would have to go, or what they might be forced to leave behind when the time came.
For once, however, Nezu stopped trying to answer every question immediately.
There would be time for that.
There had to be.
For now, they were home. Diana was downstairs, Kuro was purring beside his ear, and Segu was still holding his hand.
Whatever waited beyond the life they understood had not taken any of that from them yet.
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