Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter sixty-eight

Chuuya POV

The sun was hidden neatly behind the clouds as Dazai and I walked down the street, our shadows shorter under the slight absence of an all consuming light. It reminded me of a time when our shadows had truly been such a length, sunlight be damned because mafiosos did their best work during the night. But back then, the only time that we had ventured to the parks such as this was when the fighting had to be taken to a more secluded area. It wasn't often that we faced threats as large as that - only one notable experience coming to mind - but this didn't feel at all like that.

I glanced at the Mackerel as we ventured father into the forest, at the cold look in his eyes, a startling sea green that oftentimes, when I looked back on memories of that week, had me wondering if monsters could drown on land. Looking at them now, I thought that I knew the answer.

"Why are we here, bandage waste?" I asked, shaking the thoughts from my head, brushing them off as the shitty Dazai getting under my skin once more.

I'd expected a toothy grin and a thousand false words, but was met neither by the younger man.

"The woods are the easiest place for demigods to hide during quests," the detective said quietly, his words brimming with a honesty that they hadn't truly possessed since the last time we had encountered his side of the mythological world in such a way. "They're vast and safe in a way that the streets often aren't."

I nodded and wondered if this bout of truth would continue, it has before until that last day on the beach.

Annoyance crawled up within me as the tree leaves scraped at my skin, my ability flaring and begging to be used with each stray touch. I looked to Dazai, hoping to distract myself by watching him have the same problem, but nearly lost my breath at the simple sight before me.

He was only walking through the woods, same as a moment before, but something old stirred within me as I watched the demigod's finger trail over the bark of the trees. Nothing had changed, and yet suddenly the younger man looked ethereal in a way that he hadn't in years.

He was smiling, soft and annoyed.

Fond.

The scent of a not so distant fire filled my lungs as we continued to walk, the ground shaking slightly as the shadows grew darker than they had been only a moment before. My skin crawled with some sort of warning, one that it had never given before when Arahabaki had been more thoroughly locked away. And Dazai looked completely unbothered by it all.

As we draw closer to the source of the smoke, gems begin to litter the ground like gravel, jade and gold, quartz that shined like every crystal that had ever lived under the sun. Some of them were the sort of precious pieces that the Port Mafia would have had to import into the country to be used, and even then none of those gems had ever looked so stunning.

I knelt down to grab a small piece of jade, but was stopped by a light touch on my shoulder, one that was barely there at all but held so much weight because it was.

"Don't," Dazai said in a way that left no room for questioning it even if I had thought to do so. I hadn't, not after finding the nite of panic there, so,etching so rare for the other to express that it screamed out like some sort of beacon. "They're cursed."

I drew my hand back to my side and stood as if the ground was suddenly tainted with acid, a featherlight touch still sitting comfortably on my skin. I didn't want to know how the other had come about this particular piece of information, it didn't sound like the sort of thing that came without a price.

We watched for a moment longer, watched as the cursed gems sunk back into the ground as if they had never existed at all. It was only then that the demigod lifted his touch. I didn't like the way that my body followed, as if to chase after it now that it was gone, but distance was wrong as the other man had already begun to walk forwards, calling out things in English that all that I recognized were the names.