Divine Grace

02 Hand In Unlovable Hand

Chapter Two.
HAND IN UNLOVABLE HAND

✷

Two ghosts stumble in the dark, one shadow darker than the other. Sendai is quiet under the moonlight, the thump thump of shoes against concrete the only sound in his ears.

That, and his gods awful headache.

The insides of his head sloshes with every step he takes, black dots scattered across his vision. Megumi doesn't remember hitting his head, but he doesn't trust his memory too much by this point. Everything's a haze after Gojō wrapped up the mission. The adrenaline must've iced everything back then, because it's coming back to bite him, and it hurts like a bitch. A continuous assault of pain searing everywhere, then a sledgehammer swung to his head. And there's blood, sticky and crusty on his temple, and he thought he knew tiredness before this. He'd spent so many days under the sun honing his technique, pushing to the brink until his shadows pulled his consciousness under. But this, this is a different kind of tiredness. One that rusts his bones and tears his muscles. All he wants is to give in, rest his head and let the darkness devour him whole and Megumi feels his knees giving under his weight —

A pair of hands catch him before the impact.

"Are you sure you can walk?" Kiyoko's voice rings in his head. "You look like you might pass out at any moment."

How he manages to gather his thoughts in between her heat is a miracle in itself. "I'm fine." Gently, he pushes himself up. "It's just a little headache."

"You don't look fine." Kiyoko has concern written all over her face, fingers digging into his biceps, and Megumi thinks he wants to smooth back the lines of her face. "We should've called a cab—"

"I can walk." He insists, steadying himself on her arms. The world feels like it might slip under his feet, but he can still see straight. Can still walk. He'd crawl if he had to.

"You clearly cannot."

"I'll be fine, Kiyoko. I'm not so easy to kill."

She grimaces. "Let's pray you're too stubborn for Death."

Megumi isn't sure if he's dreaming when her hand envelops his wrist, pulling him into the unknown.

The space between dream and reality is a curse. Junctures and crossroads and bridges, liminal spaces where the mortal plane thins and intersects with the opposite, the gates of Hell just beyond reach. Then, the thin precipice between midnight and twilight when ghosts and demons come out to play. They call it the witching hours, times when the Devil is at his strongest, the culmination of cursed energies in the day.

There exists a hypothesis as to why it happens, something about circadian rhythms and REM sleep that renders a non-shaman's cursed energy to flare unbidden during these hours — when the gates of Hell open and curses are born out of its womb. Megumi remembers reading it in one of his textbooks, a far away memory now.

The space between dream and reality is a curse. Nevertheless, Megumi anchors himself to where they are intertwined, out of fear that he might slip away. (Or her, instead. He isn't sure.) Kiyoko's cursed energy rolls out in thick, syrupy waves, and when it grazes him, it's like a match sparked, heat injected to his veins.

The burn is real.

She's real.

He's real.

The motel is a musty, old kind of thing located on the quieter side of town. The room consists of faded wallpapers and yellowed ceilings, equipped with a double bed in the middle and a suspicious-looking bathroom squeezed in the corner. The mattress is sunken, edges of the bed covers are lined with rusted tinge, and there is a thin film of dust layering the linoleum-tiled floor.