Chapter IV.XXI (4.21) - Wake Up

  Before even opening his eyes, Kizu felt a brilliant connection between himself and Mort. Nearly as strong as the moment when they’d first bonded. He felt every hair on his familiar’s body as if it was his own. He smelled the crisp night air, the ever so subtle aftertaste of old fruit in the back of his throat. He crouched in on a tree branch outside, staring in through a window at himself.

  Then Kizu gasped and sat up straight, desperately blinking out the double vision. His head swiveled to the nearest window where, sure enough, Mort’s big yellow eyes stared back at him.

  “Kizu!”

  Without further warning, someone tackled into his chest, throwing him back onto the bed.

  “Ione?”

  His friend’s weight pressed him back onto the pillows. Only then did he finally take in his surroundings. He was in the academy’s medical wing. His mind went back to swallowing the potion. And then the vision that followed. It didn’t take a genius to know what must have happened. Those had been the memories of his soul stowaway. In a way, the potion had worked even a bit too well. Instead of prompting the entity to speak, it had instead been forced to unload its thoughts on him.

  “I had forgotten as well.” The entity sounded wistful. “Who I once was.”

  The scene hadn’t felt like a random snippet of the past though. It was more than simply who the soul had once been. It felt like the beginning of something. An important event.

  “I’m fine now,” Kizu reassured Ione.

  She clung to the collar of his uniform, shaking slightly. She said nothing.

  Kizu gingerly patted her on the back, trying to reassure her as his mind continued to process what he had seen. These were mysteries from a past shrouded in obscurity. No text would give him nearly as many answers as that simple scene he’d witnessed. Already, Kizu was debating swallowing another dose of his earlier brew.

  “You can’t do that.”

  Kizu blinked. Had Ione just read his mind? That made no sense.

  “I’m fine,” he said again. “I just fell asleep, that's all. It was more powerful than I’d expected.”

  Ione finally released him and sat back. She glared at him. Kizu, confused by the expression, opened his mouth to ask her what was wrong. All that left him was a wheeze as Ione suckerpunched him in the gut.

  “What…” he barely got the word out through gasps.

  “Sorry!” Her eyes lit up in concern, then they hardened again just as quickly. “I mean. You can’t take stupid risks like that, Kizu.”

  “It wasn’t much of a risk,” he said, still slightly out of breath. “The side effects were just a little stronger than I thought.”

  “I had to carry your unconscious body across campus!”

  “You carried me?”

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  “Well, I mean, I summoned something to carry you. That’s not the point!” Ione took a deep breath, taking in air as if she had just been the one suckerpunched. “Listen. Kizu. I thought…well, I thought you’d been seriously messed up. You might have known what you were swallowing, but I didn’t. Even Knoff was uncertain based off the ingredients I described to him.”

  “Next time I’ll do a better job of explaining the ingredients,” Kizu promised.

  “Good.” Ione paused “And…I’ll do better about listening. If I’d paid attention….”

  “Nothing would have been different,” Kizu reassured her. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Everything went fine. Like I said, just a little more potent than I expected.”

  “I wouldn’t have spent the last day and a half sitting here at your bedside, believing you were dying and blaming myself. That would have been different.”

  “Wait…day and a half.” Kizu looked back out at the window. It was night time. He’d assumed he’d only been out for a few hours at most. It had been the end of classes when he’d begun experimenting.

  His bond with Mort, while fading back to normal, was still stronger than usual. He used it to touch base with his familiar. In quick succession, Kizu got an impression of the monkey’s activities for the last day.

  Checking in on Anata and the Kitsune as they explored town, hunting bugs, picking fruit. But those experiences took up only a fraction of Mort’s time. The monkey had mostly been perched in that same tree outside the window, looking in on Ione and Kizu. While Mort had known he was fine and even seemed to understand to some degree the events going on in Kizu’s mind, Kizu still felt a massive pang of guilt as he understood to what extent Ione had watched after him. His friend had skipped her classes and not left his side for more than a few minutes the entirety of his stay. She’d barely even eaten food, only taking what Taroe forced on her. She’d cried. For him.

  “Ione…” he started, trying to find the right words to apologize. ‘I’m sorry’ didn’t seem quite right. And he wasn’t really all that sorry about drinking the potion. But he still felt guilty. Instead, he went with a different approach. “Thank you. Thanks for staying by my side.”

  “Yes. You owe me.” She was sounding more like her normal self again.

  “And you want?”

  “Dinner,” she said succinctly. “No more of this dancing around. I want dinner.”

  “Now?” It made sense that she’d be hungry with how little she must have eaten, but it was the middle of the night. He doubted he could find her food. Maybe Mort could fetch her some of the mango he’d been eating earlier….

  She tapped his forehead. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay up there? Of course not now!”

  “You mean…just, like, sometime get you some dinner.” Then it finally clicked in place. A date. She wanted him to take her on a date. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

  Her brow scrunched up as she looked at him with renewed concern. Then she glanced around the room, as if searching for a medical student.

  “Yes!” he blurted out before she could step away. “Yes. Of course. Um. How’s tomorrow sound? Or is that too soon? Next week?”

  “Let’s go with next week. Gives you time to figure out where to take me. Doesn’t actually have to be dinner per se....”

  She gave a shaky smile, her usual unwavering confidence a bit less concrete. Kizu couldn’t help but notice her eyes were bloodshot, the whites a bit pink.

  “I’ll…give it some thought.” Of course, that sent him down an entirely different spiral of thoughts. Not only wondering if he should do more than dinner, but also a nagging insecurity that he might not be ready for a date after his break up with Emilia. What if he messed up? It threatened more than a romantic relationship. Ione was his closest friend. If it went wrong, things could be disastrous.

  Then again. His last relationship had resulted in a mangled leg, an enemy of one of the most dangerous students at the academy, and an ex who was one of the most popular. Also the disappointment of his parents, but Kizu didn’t really care about that. Still, it was hard to see a relationship going worse than his last one.

  But this wasn’t a relationship. It was a single dinner. He needed to stop getting ahead of himself. There were still plenty of outs if he needed to take one. At the end of the day, he wanted this. So he decided to ride it out and stop overthinking things.

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