Only The Young | ✔

Chapter Seventeen

The wind was howling outside, making the curtains billow and Tehani jolted awake from her nightmare, panting as her hands fumbled to put on the lights. She leaned back against the headboard, sighing when the room was bathed in warm yellow light from the lamp. It had been a month since Yuri had died and a month since her life had shifted into something that she wasn't quite sure of.

Sometimes she dreamt of her best friend, but not of the kind girl she had been, instead her dreams were plagued with a different kind of Yurika — the one the Yako had made her to be.

Tehani kicked off her comforter and swung her legs so they were on the cold hardwood floor. She stood and slipped her feet into the fuzzy slippers, a part of her had thought going back home would change everything, but nothing was the same, her beloved town had been destroyed by a tornado, her best friend was dead and she was living with her family in the home of the mayor of Sunville.

Everything seemed to have been taken from her, and she was paying for using blood magic, sometimes she experienced strange nightmares and other times, her little brother had found her almost choking on her vomit after a seizure. 

Tehani cast a backward glance at her little brother who was fast asleep on the bed besides hers. She put on a jacket over her pyjamas top and left for the living room.

She was chewing on her bottom lip and thinking of how she would leave in the middle of the night without waking up everyone in the house when she heard quiet footsteps, Tehani stiffened and turned around, an explanation on her lips that froze when she saw the person.

Bruce — the mayor of Sunville's son — was leaning against the wall and dangling his keys above his head.

"Need a ride?" He asked. She liked that he seemed to understand her, after all, it was he and his girlfriend that had dealt with the Sunville monster problem some months ago.

Tehani nodded and out they went, he drove in silence, only speaking to ask where she was going and answering her question when she pointed at the mansion he drove past — he told her it was the infamous Einstein House for the deranged.

Minutes later, she was standing outside the gates of Sunville cemetery, where Yuri had been buried, for now, until Eden was okay to return out — but among everything going on with the country in particular and its recent fight with coronavirus, she doubted they would be returning home anytime soon — or be buried wherever her father wanted her to be."

"You don't need to come with me." She told Bruce, he told her Caroline — his girlfriend — was just around the block and would be joining him, she nodded.

The gates were wide open and for the longest time, Tehani just stared at them, only jolting from her trance when she felt someone standing besides her. She found that she wasn't surprised that Castor was besides her, in pyjamas and Pollux was behind him.

"You felt it too?" Tehani asked him.

"I did." He affirmed.

On the day Yuri had been buried, Mr. Takahashi had told her something that stuck with her.

"Kitsune are fox spirits like how the Yako are, Tehani." He had said, looking older than Tehani had ever seen him and stress lines all over his face. "Yuri is not a kitsune, she was blessed to carry the spirit of one — like how the Yako took control of her body. When she dies — the spirit does not die and will only leave to settle in another body, and because she is a kitsune first before she is a human, we like to say that someday, she may wake — totally human."

"Someday, when is someday?" Tehani remembered asking.

"Someday can be tomorrow, today or the next hundred years. It gives me comfort, to know that someday she will be ready to wake, and we will know that day." He had replied, before patting her shoulder and moving on to talk to her father.

Now she stood before brass gates and wondered if it was that or she was sensing something else.

"Only one way to find out." Pollux shrugged, they had all changed in several ways, and Pollux seemed to have retreated into a shell, rarely smiling or goofing around.

Tehani cast a backward glance at Bruce's convertible, there was a girl sitting on the passengers seat besides him and it seemed like they were laughing together. She  wondered how long it had taken for them to return to their normal.

"So optimistic." Castor muttered sarcastically.

Yurika hadn't been buried the usual way, her body had been put in a casket and placed in a crypt in the cemetery, thankfully there wouldn't be any digging tonight.

Tehani realized too late that they were staring at her, and it was only then that she noticed she had been smiling. It was the first time she had thought of Yuri that hadn't turned her into a blubbering mess.

"What?" Tehani asked.

"Nothing." The twins chorused but they were smiling small smiles too.

She nodded then they did too, and together they stepped into the cemetery.