In relation to this post, Kento attempted to keep Ume away from Shibuya that day. She was never trained properly as a sorcerer, and there were too many high level curses there. He would have been distracted by her presence, which would have cost more lives than had been lost already.
Except, he nearly lost his. Except he was so badly injured that, for a moment, he was dead. And when Yuji dragged Ume from her terror-struck haze, begging her to heal Kento, she understood why her lover never wanted her involved in his work. Why he tried so hard to push her away from him – even though it was him who couldn't stay away from her in the end.
When her trembling hands touched his burned and ruined flesh, she saw the horror that was Mahito lingering there. Haunting her lover's broken body. Ume had never understood her ability, how it worked and what it did, but she used it. She banished the lingering cursed energy from Kento's body, and wove him back together. He was whole, if not scarred. But despite her efforts, her lover did not wake. He did not reassure her that everything would be fine. He did not take her in his arms and comfort her.
Ume knew then, the hatred and despair that created curses. She understood how creatures like Mahito were born. She could feel the slick, writhing hatred worming from her stomach and into her throat. She could taste the ash and rot it was made from. It was only when Yuji threw his arms around her shoulders, pulling her gaze from the too-still form of her beloved, that the sensation left her.
The boy, broken and covered in blood, pulled her into his arms and they cried together. And when they were spent they picked up all the broken pieces of their friends and brought them to places of healing, or places of rest. Kento still did not wake.
He did not wake for many months, Ume sitting by his side, ever watchful. Her hands still trembled – they had not stopped since she raced after Kento to Shibuya. He did not wake for many months longer. Her hands still tremored.
And one day, he was gone. Bed empty. The nurses could not give her any information, and looked at her as though she had a screw loose when she insisted Kento had been a patient. It was as though he had never been in the hospital at all. That he had never even existed.
She returned to her bakery, her shaking hands imbuing her bread with the same healing energy that had failed to save Kento. She returned to her home, her sisters coming and going to make sure she showered and ate, confused as to why a man's disappearance – a man they had never said more than a few words to – could hurt their sister so much.
It wasn't until a few weeks after Kento had disappeared from the hospital that Ume walked into her home, run ragged from the bakery, that she noticed her door was unlocked. That a familiar pair of men's dress shoes were placed neatly at the step up into the house. That Kento's lime green house shoes were missing from their cubby by the door.
Ume didn't bother putting her's on. Her purse dropped from her trembling hands, clattering loudly to the floor. Her shoes thudded against the walls as she kicked them off in her haste to find the person who had broken into her home.
She saw him then, large form sprawled onto her couch, arm thrown over his eyes. A faint burn scar trailed from his forehead and into the unbuttoned collar of his teal shirt. The same burns trailed up his arms, revealed by his rolled up shirtsleeves. They were no longer the bright, shining pink they had been when she healed him. His hair had begun to grow back, tamed with spiced hair paste where it grew back wrong from the scarring.
Ume's hands did not shake as she pointed at him, enraged. Words flying from her lips as that anger, that curse birthing anger, poured from her. As her pain, hidden and sealed inside her chest, broke free in a torrent of words and tears.
Kento sat, arm falling from his eyes as she stepped closer to him. His eyes were reverential when she stopped between his legs, the warm glow of her cursed energy pulsing off her in waves. He pulled her to him then, cutting off the stream of anguish spewing forth from her soft mouth, and crushed her in his arms.
She clung to him, hands completely still, and they said not another word.
