Chapter 71: Lights Out
By the time they made it back to The Hive, at Kori’s, the day had chewed through their legs and left the wrappers.
Raizen got the door first. The apartment smelled like clean tea and old books. Jackets went onto chair backs in a trail that would shame them tomorrow. Even Arashi didn’t bother to set it nicely on the coat hanger. Keahi collapsed onto the couch face first. Arashi claimed the armchair like a throne that had disappointed him. Hikari sat on the floor with her back to the wall and let her head rest against it like she could borrow its spine.
"My legs now hate me" Keahi said into a cushion.
"They have excellent taste" Arashi tried to tease. "You are a tyrant."
Hikari laughed under her breath. Raizen let the laugh work on his bones a second before it kind of died.
Kori wasn’t home.
The room noticed it together. No clipped steps. No key in the lock. No voice that could fill a space without getting louder. And no Pastry bags.
"She’s still with Kenzo, I think" Hikari said, softer than a question.
"Inspection is taking this long?" Arashi asked, to nobody in particular. "Also, he looks like the kind of man who reads every valve a bedtime story."
Keahi rolled over. "He carried that ledger like it was a child."
"Please do not talk about ledgers like that," Arashi said. "I’m trying to recover."
They let the quiet have them. City noise drifted in through the window - low, pleasant. Somewhere below, a scooter buzzed. Somewhere far above, the Lighthouse did its lazy turn none of them could see from here. As if it detected something.
A knock came, polite and knuckle-light.
Raizen was up before he realized he had stood. He cracked the door and the hallway framed Kenzo the way a forge frames a blade - all straight lines and sure hands. Hanging by his neck and onto his broad shoulder, Kori lay like a problem that had chosen to be easy for once. There was color in her cheeks. Her eyes were shut. She looked peaceful in a way that felt illegal.
"Evening" Kenzo said, quiet enough not to wake anybody who pretended to be sleeping.
"What happened?" Raizen asked, keeping his voice low to match.
"She overdid it" Kenzo said. "Long day. Long week, I guess... Never seen her drink this much, but oh well..." He shifted his grip like she weighed nothing. "Thought I shouldn’t leave her walking."
After one second, as if he was deciding if he should or not, he added "Good thing that she could mumble where she lived... If she hadn’t, I would have had to take her to my place, or the Academy somewhere"
Kori’s cheeks caught an even brighter color.
They made room. Kenzo stepped in and laid Kori on the couch with the kind of care that never has to announce itself. He eased her head onto a pillow. He adjusted a stray strand of hair like touching it made him dangerous.
"Thank you" Hikari said, standing before she had decided to.
Kenzo nodded once. "You’re all home safe. Good." He straightened and looked like a man who had remembered he had to be polite again.
"You didn’t seriously think that something bad would have happened, did you?" Leahu threw him a weird look.
Arashi opened his mouth. Something snarky auditioned and failed. "Right" he said instead.
Keahi sat up enough to wave a salute she would deny later. "Night, Kenzo."
Kenzo’s mouth twitched - a private joke with himself. "Good night."
He crossed to the door, set his hand on the frame for half a second like he could steady the whole apartment, and was gone. The latch clicked.
Kori’s eyes opened.
It wasn’t a slow flutter or a groggy protest. They popped open like a story starting. She sat up in a single smooth motion and then clapped both hands over her face because her cheeks were on fire.
"Did you see him carry me," she half-whispered, half-laughed through her fingers.
Hikari’s hand flew to her own mouth. "Kori!"
Arashi said nothing. He had entered the rare territory called Speechless.
Keahi squinted like she was trying to calibrate a person. "You were awake...?"
"I built my immunity to poison, alcohol and other stuff like this" Kori said, which answered nothing and everything. She dropped her hands and beamed in a way that could have powered Ironvein for a minute. "Also I might have been faking a little."
"A little" Arashi repeated, tasting the words. "As in completely."
Kori kicked her heels against the couch like a teenager who had been handed the sun and told to be cool about it. "He didn’t really have to carry me" she said, instantly betraying herself. "But he did. And he is very steady. Did you know he is very steady. Of course you know. You have eyes."
Keahi lay back down and put a forearm over her face. "I am going to pass away."
Hikari giggled, tears threatening, happiness stupid and bright. "You like him."
Kori inhaled a scandalized breath that meant a lot of things: "I like that he is careful," she said, valiantly formal. "And that he listens. And that he pretends not to know jokes so I can tell them badly and he still laughs. And that..." She stopped, realized she was listing, glowed even redder, and bit her lip. "I should stop talking."
"Yeah, probably" Arashi and Raizen said at the same time, recovering enough to live. "The image of you as an unstoppable wall is cracking like festival candy."
Kori straightened in micro-seconds. The command posture slid on like armor. She smoothed her sweater, pushed hair behind her ear, and found her voice again - the one that could line a room up.
"None of that happened," she said.
"All of that happened," Keahi said to the ceiling.
"None," Kori repeated, then immediately betrayed herself again by smiling. She looked around at her four and softened in the places that mattered. "Are you hurt."
"Only in the feet," Hikari said.
"And in the pride," Arashi added. "Whack a Nyx will bill us for emotional damages."
Kori ignored him with decades of practice. "Good. Then lights out."
"Now?" Keahi protested, purely ceremonial.
"Yes," Kori said. "Now. You can brag about your records in the morning. And argue about dumplings. And tell me why you tried to assassinate a harmless machine with two mallets."
"It insulted me first," Keahi said.
"Sleep," Kori said, pointing at the hallway like it owed her money.
They shuffled. Hikari swayed in the doorway with that loose, sleepy grace some people get like their bones have decided to float. Kori reached out without thinking and straightened Hikari’s collar. It was domestic and sharp and made Raizen look away for a second because something in his chest had opinions about safety.
Arashi paused like he had one last joke he could not find. "If you two get married," he began.
"Bed," Kori said.
He went.
Keahi tugged Hikari along by the wrist. Raizen waited a beat and stayed where he was. Kori noticed, of course she did.
"You too," she said, gentler now.
"In a second," Raizen said.
Kori hesitated, looked toward the door like she could still see the hallway Kenzo had taken, then back at her crew. The blush tried to return. She wrestled it. "Thank you," she said to the room, which was not what she meant. She meant thank you for letting me have this and not making me explain it. She meant thank you for being here when I needed to be ridiculous.
"You are welcome," Keahi called from the bedroom, because walls, in this apartment, had ears.
Kori pinched the bridge of her nose, gave up on pretending, and smiled all the way. "Good night."
"Night," Hikari answered, already halfway gone.
The apartment settled. Doors clicked. Someone turned in a blanket and made that soft sound blankets make. Pipes sighed in the walls. The hum of the city tucked itself low like a cat under furniture.
Kori stood in the living room a second longer, hands on her hips like she was checking the corners for trouble. She failed to find any. She failed happily. She reached for the light, then thought better, crossed back, and pulled a throw over the end of the couch like she might fall asleep there just to be near the memory of being carried.
"Lights out," she said again, to no one now, and flipped the switch. She padded to her room, closed the door quietly, and the apartment breathed.
Raizen lay on his back, eyes making shapes out of the ceiling shadows. Across the small room, Hikari had already surrendered to sleep. She slept like someone who had learned to take it when it came - soft, still, the corner of her mouth relaxed. A strand of hair glowed where the streetlamp drew a line through the curtains.
He turned his hand over.
In his palm, the earrings lay like two tiny truths - brass stars with four points, edges beveled just enough to catch a little night and give it back. They were lighter than he expected. They were heavier than he could explain.
He closed his fingers around them and felt the little heat the metal had borrowed from his skin.
"Tomorrow," he whispered to the quiet, which was the same as promising himself to be brave when the sun made things obvious.
The city moved on outside - scooters, soft voices, a distant laugh. Far above, the Lighthouse kept its patient sweep. In here, four breathing patterns found each other and matched.
Lights out.