Warnings: None

Lucky Child

Chapter 112:

"In the Cards"

With the intensity of a summer storm, Kagome shrieked, "I can't freakin' believe this!"

I winced and held the phone about a foot away from my head. I was pretty sure my parents had heard her from down in the kitchen, but when they didn't come thundering up the stairs to see who's made such an awful racket, I gingerly held the phone to my ear again.

"But why didn't he tell us?" Kagome continued in plaintive tones. "He sings? He plays at open-mic nights? He sings—" A beat. "What did he sing, out of curiosity? I can't really get a handle on his music tastes. Or any tastes. Tough nut to crack, that guy..."

"I think he wrote it himself. I'd never heard it before."

"He writes songs?" Disbelief radiated over the phone almost as loudly as her voice. "I never would've guessed."

"Me neither."

We lapsed into silence. Only a few hours after I'd returned home after my talk with Minato, I'd called Kagome as I did my homework, wanting to fill her in on the afternoon's events… not to mention because I couldn't get Minato's song out of my head. Its melancholy notes and lyrics full of longing kept replaying in my ears, infectious and unrelenting; only talking things out with someone who'd understand could hope to quiet the noise. Or so I hoped.

"It's clear he has a lot going on internally," I said, still thinking about the song he'd sung. "Whatever it is, he keeps more to himself that we realized."

"I'll say." Kagome heaved a sigh. "Sailor Mercury already, huh?"

"You haven't seen anything in the papers about other Scouts, have you?"

"Not yet, but then again, I haven't been looking very closely. They've got—what? Another year before Usagi is supposed to awaken to her powers?"

"As far as I know," I said, recalculating what I knew about the Sailor Moon and Yu Yu Hakusho canons in my head for good measure. "No clue how deep into canon they are yet, now that Minato knows Ami." A wry smile twisted my mouth. "Definitely could've sped things up, if I know fate the way I do."

Kagome cursed under her breath. "Think he's met anyone else? Like, besides Mercury?"

"Knowing him, I'm sure he has."

"That little faker!" Kagome laughed. "Giving you the third degree about being careful, and here he is, already rubbing elbows with people he shouldn't be."

"I somehow doubt he's doing anything other than meeting them," I said, rising to Minato's defense in spite of myself. "Like a scout—not a Sailor Scout, but a militaryscout, scoping out the battlefield before a skirmish. He's probably taking notes about temperaments and intelligence and stuff so he can better command them in battle or something."

"Oh god, he totally would, wouldn't he?"

"Yeah. He would."

There was something in my tone, I suspect, because Kagome did not answer right away. I flipped through my chemistry homework for a minute before Kagome sighed. I could picture her shaking her head, black bangs flopping silken against her small forehead.

"OK. I'll bite," said Kagome at last. "What's wrong?"

I shrugged, even though she couldn't see me. "I just hope he's OK. That's all."

"Do you have a reason to think he's not OK?"

"That song of his was…" I trailed off, at a loss for words. "I think he misses his old life more than he lets on."

"Well, he did tell us that his intention is to go back to his old life someday, somehow," Kagome reasoned. "So…"

Right. That. I'd almost forgotten. Pillowing my cheek on my hand, I stared out the window above my desk, watching as dark clouds flitted across the twilit sky. Some final fingers of pink still streaked through the wooly cloud cover, optimism spearing pessimism in a ray of magenta light.

"I guess I just thought we'd gotten pretty close," I said after a time, "but it turns out he's keeping a lot close to his chest. Just makes me kind of sad."

"Hey." Her tone rang gentle, soft. "He knows we're here to talk if he wants to spill his guts. But doing that just isn't who he is; it's not in the cards for him, y'know? And there's nothing wrong with that."

"No, but you know that Sailor Moon is all about friendship and whatnot. I'm afraid that if he can't open up, it'll bite him in the ass later."

A sliver of mischief crept into her voice. "He seems to have opened up to Ami, though."

"True."

"After all, she got the invite to the open-mic when we didn't. Maybe they've gotten cozy." A faux-scandalized gasp, dramatic and artificial. "You don't think you were crashing a date, do you?"

"God, I hope not." Now it was my entire face pressed against my palm, cheeks burning red and hot. "I'm so embarrassed. Whatever that outing was, I totally butted my way in. I apologized and he said it was fine, but…" Forehead met desk with a defeated thunk. "Ugh, I'm the worst!"

Kagome laughed, bright and cheerful. "I would've done the exact same thing, if it makes you feel any better."

"It does, if I'm being honest."

She giggled again… and then she said in the voice of a cat that had just finished eating a canary, "Speaking of dates…"

"Oh, god..."

"What? I haven't even said what I'm going to say yet!"

"Yeah, but you had a tone."

"Oh, shut up," she grumbled. "What do you think Ezakiya wanted after practice the other day?"

"Oh. Uh." This change of subject I had not seen coming. "Not sure. Why?"

"He didn't show up last week or the week before," she said. "Thought for sure he'd follow up after I dragged you out and when he tried to talk to you and stuff, right after you got back from the Dark Tournament, but then he just skipped class."

All of these things were true, but they didn't quite add up to her initial segue. "What does this have to do with dates, though?" I asked, tapping my pencil against my homework.

"I mean," she said, as if it were obvious, "isn't that what he was going to ask you on? A date?"

I froze. "Uh…?"

"What else would he be asking you about?" Kagome pressed. "Because he's not involved with anything else in our lives, so I totally assumed—"

Getting hit on by a dude in my aikido class hadn't once occurred to me as a possibility, and given the other weird factors that characterized my love life, I didn't much like the thought of Kagome being right. "I don't even know the guy that well!" I wailed.

"We've known him for like a year!" Kagome shot back. "Of course you know him!"

"Yeah, but not well," I said. "And isn't he, like, 20 or something? A bit too old for me, don't you think?"

"Maybe, maybe not." She thought about it for a minute. "But you do have a point. Ezakiya's been with us since we started lessons with Hideki-sensei, but he's not exactly…"

"Memorable?" I supplied.

She giggled. "If beige were a person, its name would be Ezakiya."

"Tigger!" I said, shocked—but laughing just the same. "That's mean!"

"You know what I mean, though!"

I relented with a sigh. "He's a minor character, for sure."

"For somebody so tall, he just fades right into the background."

"Mister Cellophane should've been my name," I sang, "'cause they can see right through me, walk right by me…"

"Really, Eeyore?" Kagome said with the tonal equivalent of a single raised eyebrow. "Show tunes?"

"Hey, it fits!"

"Maybe. You're still a nerd, though." Her voice dropped into a whisper. "But if he wasn't after a date, then what do you suppose he—?"

A sharp rap of knuckles against glass had me looking up, staring through the window pane and right into a pair of burning scarlet eyes. I startled, but when the eyes didn't so much as blink, I heaved a sigh.

"Hey, can I call you back?" I said, cutting Kagome off midsentence. "There's a stray cat on my windowsill."

"Ah. Well, tell Hiei hello from me, then," Kagome said with her usual bright enthusiasm. "Talk tomorrow?"

"Sure. Bye."

Hiei still hadn't blinked by the time I returned the phone to its cradle and pulled up the window pane, a waft of humid air lapping at my face like sodden wool. He just hopped onto my desk, scattering papers, and then hopped onto my floor as I scrambled to get out of his way. Hiei didn't say anything to me at first, watching in silence as I grumbled and cleaned up the mess he'd made. Thunder rumbled in the near-dark outside, distant but ominous and smelling of ozone. Once I had my papers back in order, I shut the window against the foreboding weather, watching the orange-tinted clouds billow against the dark night sky.

"Nice to see you too, Hiei," I said, catching his gaze in the window glass.

He looked away, eyes rolling. "Tch."

"Hungry?"

A pause.

Then: "Yes."

"I'll be back in a minute."

My parents were prepping soup stock for the next business day when I came downstairs to fix Hiei a bowl of ramen and shape a few onigiri for him. Dad gave me a bit of grief for the food, given I'd already eaten dinner, but I just said I had a late night of studying ahead and he backed off (and forced a slice of cake onto my tray, too). Hiei eyed the food with his usual skepticism when I set it upon my desk, but he didn't snub it or pretend to hate it. We'd come a long way since the days when we first met, I guess. He tucked in as I relocated my homework to my bed, spreading papers across the comforter in a black and white rainbow of worksheets and textbooks.

We didn't talk much, if at all, while he ate and I studied, but I was more than content with this. I had a chemistry exam that week, and I needed the silence to concentrate. Luckily the reticent-to-be-social fire demon at my desk was more than happy to oblige. The only sounds that cut the silence were his ramen-slurping and the turning of my pages.

Oh, and then the ringing of a phone, loud and shrill in the quiet. So much for studying…

I grabbed the phone off the hook as Hiei set aside his ramen and tucked into his onigiri, cradling it between my cheek and my shoulder as I continued to look over my chemistry worksheets. I muttered only the curtest of hellos, hoping this person was a telemarketer and I could hang up in short order.

No such luck. Instead of was Yusuke's voice that came dancing through the line with a drawl of, "Hey, Tex. How's it hanging?"

"As well as can be expected," I muttered. "You?"

"Would've been better if you'd actually shown up today like you were supposed to."

I dropped my worksheets with a rustle of paper on bedspread. "Aw, fuck."

He cackled, deviousness made audible. "So what happened, Little Miss Perfect?" he teased. "It's not like you to miss a playdate. One that you organized, by the way. The kid was nearly inconsolable!"

"Somehow I doubt that, but thanks for the guilt trip." I paused, then cursed. "Was he OK, though?"

"I knew you cared," Yusuke said, triumphant. "And I mean, he wasn't happy, but I was there and so were Kurama and Kaito, so… he had fun anyway, I think." Yusuke made a sound like gagging and scoffing combined. "Also, never leave me alone with that Kaito dude again. He kept shooting Kurama dirty looks and challenging him to trivia games and it was awkward as hell. Didn't have anything to talk to him about and I was too freaked out over calling Kurama the wrong name to have any fun. Just stuck with Amanuma, and you know how he gets." Yusuke made that gross noise again, then grumbled, "Kept rubbing it in my face when I lost at Tekken."

"I'm the glue holding that social group together, yeah," I said. "I promise not to ditch next time, I swear."

"So why did you ditch, anyway?"

I hesitated—but even though my instinct was to lie, I tamped it down in favor of telling the truth. Or at least a version of it. That's what I'd promised Yusuke I'd tell him from now on, after all: the truth, and nothing but.

"Ran into a friend and got caught up in their drama," I said, choosing my words with care. "Nothing major."

He paused. Then: "Is this a Tex thing?"

"Eh?"

"Is this a Tex thing?" Yusuke repeated. "Like, something you can't really talk about much, because it's a Tex thing and not a Keiko thing?"

"Uh… Yeah. Actually, yeah, it is," I said. "That's a good way of putting it."

"OK. Good," Yusuke said. "So anyway—"

"You mean you're not gonna make me explain?" I interjected.

Yusuke huffed. "I mean, so long as you're not lying to me, I really don't care. I know there's stuff you can't tell me, but telling me that you can't tell me isn't the same thing as pretending nothing's wrong." He chuckled. "But we gotta get a code-word for these kinds of situations so I'm not left wondering next time."

"A code word," I repeated.

"Yeah," said Yusuke. "I'm thinking 'swordfish.'"

"Of course you are." I laughed. "Fine. 'Swordfish' it is."

"Hell yeah," said Yusuke. "Oh, and we're all getting together again next weekend, by the way. Same crew as this weekend." He injected his voice with menace I did not for a moment believe. "Only you can't ditch us this time, got it?"

"I promise to do my very best to show up on time. Scout's honor," I said—and then the irony of that phrase struck me, and I tried my best to keep from laughing.

And I did a good job, apparently, because Yusuke didn't notice. "You'd better, or I'll shave your head while you sleep," was all he said. "Anyway. I stole a six-pack from my mom. Want me to come over? We can play Dragon Quest."

Tempting though the offer was, the responsible Keiko-half of me won out over the Tex half. "Sorry, Yusuke. Can't," I said, regretting every word. "I have a test to study for, so I really need to be alone with no people or distractions."

"Lame. Boring. Nerd." He yawned, as if I bored him half to tears. "Maybe tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow's our parolee meeting, so that works."

"Cool. See ya then."

"Bye."

I hung up and turned back to my work, but before I could read a single word, the rattle of my chair sliding back over the carpet dragged me out of the world of studying. The sight of Hiei climbing onto my desk and levering open the window had me setting my books aside, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed as if I intended to follow him into the stormy night beyond. Humid wind blew in through the open portal, smelling of wind and wet and sharper, more intense ozone than before.

"Where are you going?" I said instead, forcing myself to stay seated.

Scarlet eyes flickered my way; he already had a foot out the window, and he didn't bother pulling it back inside when he curtly said, "Away."

"Why?" I said. Two uneaten onigiri on his abandoned plate appeared almost plaintive in my eyes. "You haven't finished your food. Was it gross?"

He scoffed. "The food isn't the issue."

"Then why—?"

"You need to be alone, no people or distractions," he said—and it took me a second to realize he'd just parroted part of my conversation with Yusuke back at me.

But rather than feel offended, I just rolled my eyes. "You're not people, Hiei. You're 20 knives duct-taped together that somehow gained sentience and a thirst for violence."

Hiei stared for a moment.

Then he leaned toward me and said, "Thank you."

"You're welcome." A long pause as he hauled himself forward, preparing to swing out of the window entirely. "I don't mean to say you're not a person, by the way. Just want to be clear."

He glowered. "But I'm not one. I'm a demon, not a human."

"I didn't say human. I said person. There's a difference."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Whales are people," I insisted. "So are elephants and some species of bird."

"So I'm an animal now?" he said, baring his teeth like one.

"No," I told him, threading my hands through my hair in distress. "Fuck, Hiei. Look, you don't—" I shook my head. "Aside from yowling about food like an alley cat, you so very rarely make demands of me that having you hear isn't disruptive to my alone-time, is what I'm trying to say."

"Funny." He pulled one foot back into the room, standing unabashedly atop my desk. Every acerbic word dripped acid onto my desk when he said, "And here I thought making dinner might constitute some form of effort on your part. I'll be sure to ask for more next time."

"Don't be glib. I meant emotional demands." Cracking a smile when he didn't reply, I added, "If anything, I'm the one pushing emotion onto you. Sometimes I don't understand why you keep coming back." A shrug, helpless. "I'm sure I get annoying."

He pulled himself back into the room with a jerk, standing at his full height atop the desk so he could glare down the length of his nose. "Stop that," he hissed, scarlet eyes livid. "Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"If anyone is going to insult you, it's going to be me."

It was tough to read his expression, just then. Anger, annoyance, a barely leashed frustration I couldn't put my finger on, and so many other things I couldn't quite name all warred with one another, turning Hiei's face into a thunderhead glutted with a summer monsoon. But while his words weren't exactly sweet, they were… nice. In their own weird way, of course. Such is Hiei, after all. I ducked my head and smiled, hiding the expression behind a hand.

"Fine. I'll knock it off," I muttered. "Just get off my damn desk and shut the window, why dontcha?"

For a second, he didn't move. Then he took a single step forward and dropped to the carpet like a stone, turning so he could yank down the windowpane and sit stiffly in my office chair once more. He picked up one of his remaining onigiri without a word, biting into it and making a face when he encountered the sour pickled plum hidden within the rice. I smiled, squashing the look when he shot me a glare, and pulled my textbook back across my lap. But the words wouldn't focus when I looked at them, so I raised my head and watched as Hiei picked the plum out of the onigiri and set it on the plate with a look of supreme distaste.

"Before I get sucked back into these equations," I said as he took another bite, "there's something I've been meaning to ask you."

Hiei swallowed, heedless of the grains of rice on his chin. "I thought you said I wasn't a distraction," he said with a taunting sneer. "My, how the tables have turned."

"Oh, shut up," I grumbled. "Botan got me thinking. You do have a place to stay, right? You're not sleeping in trees or on park benches?"

Another of his cutting stares. "I don't sleep in trees."

I raised my hands. "Fine, fine. Mea culpa." Dropped my hands back into my lap with a smile. "Just wanted to be sure you had a place to keep the rain off your head. Rainy season isn't far off, after all."

As if summoned, thunder rumbled in the distance, and a smattering of raindrops struck the window. But Hiei didn't acknowledge me. He just stared at his onigiri without speaking, soon raising it to his lips for another vicious bite. So he was going to pull his usual stray cat routine and only be talkative on his terms, huh? Typical Hiei; the thought made me smile. Settling back against my bed's many pillows, I curled my knees closer to my body and set my book atop them, scanning the page and highlighting a section I suspected would be relevant to my next chemistry test.

"A skyscraper in midtown."

My head jerked up as I uttered an eloquent, "Huh?"

"I stay in a skyscraper in midtown," Hiei repeated. He still didn't look at me, eyes now affixed on the window—and the oncoming storm beyond. "It's under construction. Humans are afraid of heights, and none climb high enough to disturb me."

"Oh. Well." I struggled for words. "That's nice, I guess."

"It won't be for much longer. They'll soon complete the lower floors and move on to mine." His scowl deepened, carving deep lines around his mouth. "I keep having to relocate higher to avoid their racket."

"You could always sabotage their power tools," I offered, trying to be helpful. "Or just fuck up their progress while they're away, slow construction down. Brainwash them into wasting a shift staring at a wall, or…"

"Hmmph." The scowl turned into a smirk. "You're not entirely useless, after all."

"Aw, Hiei. I'm touched." Placing a hand atop my heart, I simpered, "That's the nicest thing anyone's ever—"

Red eyes gleamed like a wolf's at midnight. "Shut up, you insufferable twit," Hiei snarled, but when I loosed a laugh, his ire cooled. "What are you smiling about?"

"Just happy to know you have a place that'll keep the rain on your head, that's all." I shrugged, glancing at the raindrops leaving diamond trails down the shimmering window. "Though I have to wonder—do you decorate your demonic bachelor pad with all my stolen bowls, or…?"

"Not this again," Hiei snapped. "And no, I don't decorate with them."

I cocked an eyebrow. "But you still have them?"

"I put them under leaks to catch the water when it rains."

"Of course you do."

He laughed, a harsh back of discordant mirth, and went right back to eating as if our conversation had never taken place. I watched him until he tucked into his slice of chocolate chip cake; when he seemed satisfied by my latest baking endeavor, I mentally congratulated myself on finding another food he liked and then went back to studying. At least if I failed chemistry, I had a future as Hiei's personal chef…

We didn't talk for the rest of the night; in fact, if pressed, I might say we didn't speak at all for hours on end. He was still there when my eyelids grew heavy in the wee hours of the morning. I carried his food tray downstairs without talking, and then I got ready for bed in that same warm silence. The silence continued when I dragged a futon from the hall closet and spread it out beside my closet door. I think the only words I spoke were a simple "Sweet dreams, Hiei" as I climbed into bed and turned off my lamp, bathing the room in darkness and the quiet sound of falling rain.

I didn't hear the window open before I fell asleep. But in the morning, Hiei was gone, the futon neatly folded beside my bed.

Flipping through the pages of my manuscript, I let out a low whistle and muttered, "That's a lot of red ink."

It was the weekend, a week to the day after I skipped out on Amanuma to follow Minato to an open-mic night—and once again I found myself socializing with someone other than Amanuma. Only this time, I wasn't skipping one outing to make it to another. It had been random chance to hear from Sato Shogo on the morning of my next trip to Mushiyori, where he coincidentally said he'd be making an appearance to promote his latest novel. He had time for a breakfast meeting, he told me, if I wanted to hear his thoughts about the manuscript I'd given him to review so many months before. The timing was perfect; I could easily see him and still have plenty of time to meet up with Amanuma afterwards. Thus, I had accepted his invitation and booked it to Mushiyori like a bat out of hell, and now we sat at the same diner where we'd first met, drinking coffee and eating an American-style brunch of eggs, pancakes and bacon.

Well. Only Shogo ate bacon. I still wasn't one for pork. Some habits you just can't break.

Shogo smiled over the rim of his coffee cup, black eyes glittering behind his glasses. "Don't get discouraged," he said, gesturing at the aforementioned red ink staining my manuscript like the spilled blood of the muses. "It's not as much as it appears. You tend to write 'puffy,' with excess verbiage that needs trimming. Study my edits and your writing will improve in no time."

I flipped through the manuscript again, pages zipping under my thumb. "Thank you for going through this in such detail," I said, half in awe of the crimson ink. "I kind of thought you'd just read it and give me your general thoughts, so this level of detail is amazing."

"I can give you an overview, too, if you'd like." He jumped right in, not waiting for an answer; I suspected he knew precisely what I'd say. "Your writing is solid, especially when it comes to dialogue, imagery and emotional impact. But you need to simplify your writing both in mechanical terms and in the construction of your plot. The latter is intricate, but to the point of inscrutability, which can make it difficult to follow." He cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up his nose, eyes briefly disappearing behind a flare on their lenses. "I apologize if you find any of that discouraging."

"That's… actually, no. I don't find it discouraging. It's all good." Happiness had flooded my chest at his words, in point of fact. "I knew all of that already—or at least I suspected it." I closed the draft of my novel and patted the cover, smiling. "In all honesty, it's a relief. Makes me feel like I'm not totally oblivious to my own shortcomings."

"And since you can't place a price of self-awareness, I consider that a victory in its own right." He raised his cup in a subtle 'cheers' gesture. "So tell me, Keiko. How have you been? I understand the school year just started. You're… three weeks past spring break? Two and a half?"

"That's right."

He watched me take a large gulp of coffee, one eyebrow creeping high. "And yet, you look rather tired for someone who's been in school for less than a month."

The coffee all of a sudden tasted much too bitter. "I've had a very taxing first month," I said, delicately setting my cup aside.

Sato Shogo said, "I see."

He said nothing else. He just waited in expectant silence, and all of a sudden I remembered this man's annoying ability to use weaponized silence to draw forth speech. And yet, although I knew what tricks he had up his sleeve, I soon found words tumbling out of my mouth like rain from a storm cloud in a miniature downpour. Weird, how easily he could do that to me. But he was a dad, a writer, and the husband of a former Spirit Detective, so maybe it wasn't so surprising, after all.

"Honestly, it's just really hard being at school," I blurted. "It just feels so weirdly normal, especially after everything else."

Shogo nodded sagely. "Kuroko told me about your foray to the Dark Tournament. She tells me that it's not for the faint of heart." He searched my face, eyes intent behind his glasses. "But you make it seem as if the return was more exhausting than the trip itself."

I didn't speak. Shogo continued to stare. I knew it was in my best interest to hold back and not spill my guts to him, but it was honestly tough not to blab about my past life now that I'd told my secret to so many others. What would be the harm of cluing him in, anyway? Maybe it would put him in danger unnecessarily? And what would the point of telling him even be? It wasn't like we were all that close. He was basically just my writing mentor, that's all—very nearly a stranger in the other ways that mattered. Burdening him with my secrets, not to mention my trauma response, seemed unnecessary indeed… which is why I needed up mimicking a clam and closing my metaphorical shell, tracing lines in the syrup on my plate with a fork as I tried my best not to blather on like a patient to her new, unwitting therapist.

If my reticence perturbed Shogo, though, he didn't let on. He just smiled and reached into briefcase at his side, rummaging around within until he pulled out a small cardboard box about the size of my hand.

"Are you familiar with tarot?" Shogo said.

"Passingly." I watched with wary interest as he opened the box and slid a small deck of cards into his hand. "Never held much of an interest in it, to be honest."

"A pity. It can be quite illuminating." He shuffled the cards with nimble fingers before sliding aside his plate and giving the table a wipe with a napkin. "Would you mind if I read your fortune?"

"Oh. Uh. Sure." He held the cards out toward me, but I just eyed them in confusion. "What do I do?"

"First, cut the cards. With your left hand, please."

I obeyed. The cards were light and smooth, cardstock matte instead of glossy. The backs were black, embossed with a moon, sun and stars rendered in gold foil. The gold caught the light when the cards moved, arresting and mysterious against the midnight background.

"Good." Setting the deck on the table between us, he explained, "We will be using my own interpretation and twist on the traditional Past Life Spread, orienting the cards horizontally instead of—are you all right?"

At the mention of past lives, I'd basically started to choke, shock seizing my windpipe in a vice. I snatched up my coffee cup and drained it, catching my breath so I could wheeze, "Just inhaled some air, that's all." At his expression of concern, I waved a hand. "Anyway. You were saying?"

"… I was saying that the spread we will use is one of my own design." He indicated the deck. "To begin, please select four cards. Place them all face down on the table to your left, in a vertical line."

I did so, laying them out as instructed. "Is there a reason I'm the one doing the handling, and not you, the fortune teller?"

"Perhaps," was his cryptic reply. "Now select three cards. Place them in the center before you in a vertical line." When I finished doing as he'd bidden, he said, "Then take a final card and set it to the right of the other cards."

I did so. The results made a sort of equilateral triangle shape, with a long edge of my left and the point jutting toward my right. Shogo reached for the "point" card first, tapping the back of that single card with a fingertip.

"This card represents your past," he explained. He touched the middle line of three cards. "These cards represent your present." Then he indicated the line of four cards. "And these represent your future." He moved back to the single card at the triangle's tip. "We will analyze your past, first."

He didn't wait for me to comment. He just flipped the card, revealing a set of scales rendered in the same gold foil and minimalist style as the moon and stars on the back of the card. Delicate lines added minute detail to the scales, almost in an Art Deco style, and the scales themselves were crowned with an upside-down crescent moon.

I had no clue what the heck it meant.

Luckily Sato Shogo knew his way around a tarot deck. He regarded the card silence before muttering, "Justice. Upright. Interesting."

"Do tell?" I said, watching as he stroked his small goatee. "I'm a bit lost, I'm afraid."

He nodded once, sharply. "Before I elaborate, I must make something clear. These cards aren't finite. Their meanings are mutable, and their interpretation depends on the interpreter. Each card is, in a sense, a seed of meaning that the reader must then grow into a proper interpretation. Please keep this in mind as we move forward in your reading."

"Will do." I pointed at Justice. "And your interpretation of this card is…?"

Shogo pushed his glasses up his nose again, eyes once more lost behind a bright white glare. "Justice, as you might imagine, indicates concepts such as consequences, accountability, truth, honesty and integrity, as well as cause and effect. If I had to guess, my intuition tells me that in your past, you experienced a major upheaval—and overturning of your entire worldview, which culminated in the revelation of some hidden truth, or perhaps a monumental change."

My heart skipped like a clumsy foot on an uneven sidewalk. "Interesting," I said, to borrow Shogo's phrasing.

Although I tried very hard not to let my poker face slip, a polite Keiko Mask in full effect, Shogo's eyes were keen. "I take it the card isn't exactly wrong?" he asked.

"… not entirely, no." And in more ways than one, but I didn't tell him that.

Shogo nodded again. "I see." He gestured at Justice. "You've no doubt noticed we only chosen one card to represent your past. This is a habit of mine, personally. No sense dwelling on the past, because lingering in it will only cause regret." His dark eyes strayed to the middle line of three cards. "But the present… now that is worth analyzing in depth."

He flipped the first card, closest to me at the bottom of the line of three. I wasn't at all certain what this one depicted, the minimalist doing my tarot-stupid self no favors. Something like an abstract hooded figure over a cup, hood decorated with a star and an eye and radiating lines of gold like a setting sun? I had no clue.

Again, Shogo had my back. "The Magician, inverted," he said.

"So it's upside down?" I asked.

"Yes."

He didn't explain why that was important, instead reaching for the middle card. This one bore a bunch of moons in a spiraling design—again, too abstract to read properly. Part of it might have looked like a crown, but I had no way of knowing if that was important.

Shogo studied it in silence before declaring, "The High Priestess. Inverted."

Another upside-down card. What did that mean?

He didn't explain. He just flipped over the last card. This one depicted a large crescent moon ringed by tiny stars and hung with crystals suspended on gossamer threads… only they appeared to be hanging up instead of down. Which made me think that this card was also…

"The Moon, inverted," said Shogo (confirming my suspicion about this card's position in the process). He stared at them and frowned, hands lying flat upon the tabletop. "All three inverted. And all cards thus far hail from the Major Arcana."

"What does that mean?"

"Their inverted position leads me to believe that all three cards are somehow related," Shogo said. "And, in theory, the Major Arcana is the purview of fate and destiny. If I had to guess…"

He lapsed into silence, eyes distant, mouth thinning into a line. The diner's other patrons ate and chattered with abandon, not noticing the hush that had fallen over our table. The syrup from my pancakes suddenly tasted too sweet, almost cloying—nauseatingly so. I pushed my plate aside and reached for the coffee pot, but not because I wanted more. I just wanted to busy my hands so they wouldn't shake.

Eventually, Shogo spoke. "The widespread presence of the Major Arcana," he said at last, "indicates that your present and your past have both been ordained by fate, in a sense."

My hands spasmed, almost dropping the coffee pot. Some splashed over my thumb, scalding; I cursed and popped the digit in my mouth, mumbling around it, "So what do these cards mean, specifically?"

He tapped the top card, furthest from me. "An inverted Moon lends itself to feelings of confusion and fear. The dark of the night, as it were, shadows clouding the intuition and inhibiting progress. It stands for uncertainty and doubt, largely of the self." His hand moved to the lowest card, closer to me. "Meanwhile, an inverted Magician is a master of illusion, deception and trickery."

"I think I know who that is," I muttered.

Shogo's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps the card stands for a specific person in your life, but more likely is that the card stands for the state of the world around you, or your state of mind." He touched the middle card. "I say this because of the inverted High Priestess."

"What does she bode, I wonder?" I said, voice low and creaky like an old crone's.

Shogo smiled at my attempt at humor, though I got the sense he was just being polite, because he spoke his next words sans humor. "An upright High Priestess speaks to intuition, the power of the unconscious and a person's inner voice. Inverted, however, it indicates that all of these things are clouded and uncertain." He tapped each party in the center line of cards one after the other, click of his nail on paper somehow loud despite the diner's din. "When taken all together, these cards tell me that you exist in a state of flux—that you aren't sure what to do, or think, or even feel. You have no idea how to move forward, and you exist in a state of flux." His head listed to the side, curious. "Do you feel you've fallen out of touch with yourself, Keiko?"

It was actually uncanny, how right he was about that—but I reminded myself that he'd so far been speaking in very general terms. That was the habit of fortune tellers, after all. Speak generally, and your predictions can suit anyone. I refused to be impressed until he said something specific to my situation. Tucking my trembling hands in my lap (and telling them to stop being stupid as I did so), I kept my very best Polite Keiko Face firmly in place.

"In a manner of speaking," was all I told him. I refused to say more and give him fodder for his predictions.

Shogo didn't push for more, thankfully. "Hopefully the cards of your future shed a little light on the subject," he said instead, smiling a kindly smile. "They're wont to do so, thankfully. Are you ready to see them?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," I said, forcing a smile. "Lay it on me. Can't get any worse, right?"

His hand stopped halfway to the first card. "I wouldn't tempt fate so readily, if I were you," he murmured—and then he flipped the card.

Even in its abstract art style, I knew Death when I saw it.

"Wow," I breathed, taking in the sight of a skull wearing a diadem, form flanked by a pair of crossed scythes. "You really weren't kidding."

"Let me comfort you now and say that this card is only very rarely literal," Shogo was quick to tell me. "Rather than a physical death, this card speaks to the end or beginning of a cycle. It references change, metamorphosis and evolution. And when taken in conjunction with your second card…"

He flipped it. I recognized a banner, like the kind that hangs from a castle parapet, plus a crown and the kind of old-fashioned trumpet I associated with knights and kings. But it the banner hung skyward, which meant…

"The Emperor," said Shogo, words clipped and careful. "Inverted."

"What's that mean?" I asked, uneasy.

He paused.

Then, quietly: "Tyranny."

"No. Nope! I don't like that," I informed him—because I didn't, and I needed whatever higher power might be listening to know exactly where I stood. "And these are both in that Major Arcana thing, right?" My stomach lurched. "So does that mean this tyrant is inevitable? Destined?"

"… perhaps."

I didn't like the look on his face one bit, either. He swiped off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, staring at the cards without blinking. Once again, the sounds of forks against plates and the reek of syrup assailed my senses, too-loud and distracting to pair with the tension that engulfed our table. My hands clenched on my lap, tangling in the hem of my shirt hard enough to warp the fabric. I hardly cared, though. I was too busy breathing through my mouth to avoid the scent of syrup to pay attention to anything but Shogo's face and the act of not throwing up.

"To be honest," he said after quite some time, "I'm not entirely sure what this indicates. If I had to guess, I would say that after you face an upheaval or change, you will face a source of tyranny." He reached for the final card. "As for the outcome…"

His fingers skimmed over the last card. Hesitated. Then flipped it with a decisive flick of wrist and fingertip.

The card showed, with gold ink on black paper, the abstract image of a man dangling from a rope that had been tied around his neck.

My skin crawled, even if I didn't know what the name of this card might be. "I think I like this even less than Death," I said, staring at it. It took effort monumental to tear my eyes away. "So what does it—Shogo?"

He didn't move. He continued to look at the card through wide eyes, cheeks drained of color, hands limp atop the table. Of all the looks he'd worn thus far, I liked this one the very least.

"Are you OK?" I asked, leaning toward him. When he didn't respond, I said, "You're kind of freaking me out, not gonna lie." When he still didn't speak, I waved a hand in front of his face, desperate for him to stop wearing that horrible expression. "Shogo. Shogo. Earth to Shogo. What does that mean?"

He started as if waking from sleep. "Sacrifice," he said—or blurted, really, word falling from his mouth like a heavy stone. "Or, more specifically—the Hanged Man means martyrdom."

I said nothing.

I processed this.

I said: "Show me the last card."

He flipped it almost too quickly, as if desperate for something else to look at. This last card seemed less fancy than those that had come before it, depicting the simple image of a sword with a crown rotating around its blade, pommel inscribed with an eye, all rendered in the abstract. Nothing about it defied gravity, so I guessed that it lay right-side up… but even so, Shogo stared at it for a while in silence.

"The Ace of Swords," he muttered after a time. "Finally, we leave the Major Arcana."

"What does that mean?"

"I wish I knew," he said, "but I can't shake the feeling that this is significant. That if the previous cards were ordained by fate, then this card… this card is all about you." He raised his eyes to meet mine, gaze level and at long last composed. "The Ace of Swords indicates a breakthrough. Clarity. A sharp mind slicing through confusion, leaving the quiet of certainty in its wake." His gaze drifted low again, distance appearing in his pupils as he stared into some forgotten chapter of time and space, out of reach from me. "Someday, Keiko, a choice will be presented to you—a dire choice. One that will impact every fiber of your world."

His phrasing made the hair rise along my arms, gooseflesh like bullet holes across my skin. No matter how I chafed it, though, my skin remained cold, a chill settling deep in the hollows of my bones.

"You will be tempted to overthink this choice," Sato Shogo continued. "You will be tempted from the correct response with prevarications and hypotheticals—but you mustn't listen to them, Keiko." Here he rocked forward, a man possessed, hand descending to the table with a smack, eyes wild and now almost too present, a glint lighting his eyes with fires I didn't understand. "You must trust your intuition. You must cleave to your instincts, and yours alone, if you are to succeed."

"Succeed in what?" was all I could think to ask.

Shogo opened his mouth to reply.

The wild in his eyes abated.

He leaned back in his seat and murmured, "I wish I knew."

Shogo looked a little grey. He drank water in silence as my hands slowly ceased to tremble. He flagged down a server when one passed and paid for the check, not replying when I offered to get it instead. Clearly this meeting was over, and he did not want to prolong it with petty niceties. Indeed, he stood and bowed before they returned his change to him, prompting me to rise and do the same. He barely looked at me when I asked him to say hi to Kuroko and the kids, smiling politely—but not warmly—as he promised to do so.

Uncertain of myself, still reeling from his abrupt shifts in mood, I turned away to leave.

"Keiko?" Shogo said.

I froze, then turned back to him with glacial speed. He stood with feet shoulder-width apart, one hand in his pants pocket, the other clamped around the handle of his briefcase. He did not blink when our gazes clashed. He only swallowed, face still grey, eyes distant once again.

"Change is coming," he said, as if his words came from somewhere else. "And complacency in the face of it serves no one."

We said nothing as his eyes returned to the present.

"Is this a prediction, or just a word of advice?" I asked as he mopped his glistening face with a handkerchief.

Shogo didn't speak.

Then, quietly, he muttered: "It's both."

He walked out without another word.

I did the same, uneasy, cards of Shogo's tarot reading shuffling through my head.

Desperately, and for the fiftieth time, I repeated, "I said I was sorry, OK?"

"Yeah, yeah," Amanuma said, rolling his eyes as he punched another button on the Goblin City machine. "I get it, already."

The scent of stale popcorn and fried circuitry permeated the arcade, smell second in intensity only to the flashing lights and beeping machines that filled Amanuma's favorite gaming center. I'd shown up here early, but he'd arrived even earlier, informing me right away that he'd already beaten six high scores and was aiming for a seventh, "So don't bother me too much and mess me up, huh?" I started my Amanuma Apology Tour (1991 edition) immediately afterward, doing a poor job of not distracting him as I dogged his steps around the arcade, intent on impressing my penitence properly and before Yusuke arrived to make an even bigger deal out of it.

(And so I wouldn't think about Shogo and the Hanged Man. That, too.)

Not that Amanuma was terribly receptive to my contrition. He responded less to my words than to my offer to pay for this trip to the arcade, plus the promise of an ice-cream sundae later, but even to these apologetic overtures (read: bribes) he still gave something of a cold shoulder. He barely looked at me between games, and while normally he'd laugh and banter and poke fun during his time at the various game machines, today he kept his eyes affixed carefully on the screen. It wasn't until I offered to play a round of Time Crisis with him that he finally made eye contact, and only so he could ask me if I wanted the red gun or the blue gun as we squared up to the machine.

"I mean it," I said as we shot enemy agents and crouched behind cover while reloading our digital weapons. "I'm super sorry. I—" An enemy popped up on a hang glider; I yodeled, "On your left!"

"Got it," Amanuma said, and he took out the enemy mook with a pinpoint strike before heaving a sigh. "Just wish you'd called or something when you knew you couldn't make it last weekend."

"I know, kid," I said, rapid-firing at the screen in front of us. "But we won't have reliable cellphones for a while yet."

Amanuma glanced away from the game long enough to give me a look that said I sounded insane, at least to him. "Cellphones? You mean those big bricks that businessmen carry in suitcases?"

"Yeah. Those." I tried not to look too guilty. "They'll get better in a few years, based on the way technology progresses, so…"

Amanuma grunted, then said, "On your right!"

"Thanks." I took out the enemy goon with a well-placed shot. "I—on your right, kid!"

"I see it!" He grinned, ice in his eyes thawing at long last. "You take the right path and I'll take the left, and if we flank 'em, then—"

We played for a while, progressing far deeper into the game than I was used to whenever I played on my own. The way to Amanuma's heart was truly paved with video games, and he grew more and more at ease with me the longer we played Time Crisis. When we finally died on a super advanced level (mostly due to my delays on the dodge button), we were prompted to input our initials on the leaderboard page—a new high score, just like Amanuma wanted.

Get really far before dying and inputting their initials. New high score.

"Y'know, you're not great at a lot of games," Amanuma said as he excitedly input his name, "but you kick butt at the shooting ones."

"I've had practice," I said, grinning as I shot the letters KEI into place on the board.

"I can tell," he said. "Want to play again?"

"Sure." Clearly the win had put him in a good mood, because at last he was actually beaming at me. Miming a quick-draw at the OK Corral, I said, "I can show you how to shoot from the hip."

Before Amanuma could reply, another voice cracked out with a snicker, "What are you, a cowboy?"

I recognized Yusuke's voice at once. Readying myself for some good ol' fashioned banter, I held the plastic Time Crisis pistol at my side and grabbed the brim of an invisible ten-gallon hat with my other hand, preparing a thick Texas drawl for Yusuke's enjoyment. Yeah, I was a dork, but I found me funny, and that's what mattered.

"I mean, I thought 'Tex' was just a nickname," Yusuke continued, "but you're really earning it."

"What can I say? I'm the fastest draw in the West." Spinning, I yanked up the pistol and mimed taking a shot, declaring, "Stick 'em up, pardner—oh."

Yusuke stood a few feet behind us, casually leaning up against a neon pink Sailor V game. He wore The Worst Outfit in Existence, ridiculous green jacket and yellow sweater vest and red plaid shirt topped with a pair of ridiculous reflective Aviators—but although his outfit was eye-catching in the extreme, it wasn't what attracted my attention first.

That honor went to Kuwabara, who stood beside Yusuke looking as shocked to see me as I felt to see him—and judging by the shit-eating grin on Yusuke's face, something told me that getting out of this confrontation sans awkwardness simply wasn't written in the cards.

NOTES

Next time on Lucky Child, we'll see some movement on the Kuwabara-is-mad-at-NQK subplot, a check-in with Ayame about all sorts of fun stuff, and more. Brace yourselves, because if my calculations are correct, shit's gonna pop off in chapter 114. Almost out of the exposition woods, yaaay!

Wrote that scene with the tarot cards a while back; was happy to get to use it this week. I know nothing about tarot, so the research aspect of this chapter was quite interesting.

Also… NQK is pansexual. IDK who hasn't picked up on that apart from a certain guest reviewer (ahem), but hear me loud and clear on this issue: Whether NQK ends up with a man, woman or nonbinary person (or no one at all), she's NO LESS QUEER as a result. I will not tolerate bi/pan erasure in this fanfic household. Have a nice day!

YOU SHOULD GO BACK THE "GHOST DETECTIVE" ENAMEL PIN PROJECT ON KICKSTARTER! It's a crowd funding project for some really awesome YYH enamel pins. We can unlock a Keiko pin with enough backers, and obviously I NEED a pin of her, so please back the project if you can! This site doesn't allow links, but searching "Ghost Detective" on Kickstarter should bring it up. Some people de-pledged recently, which sucks, but I still believe!

I want to levy a huge and joyful "thanks" towards these fine folks for their support: Solita, S, C, Flame, A, Smile, J, R, Captain Kitty, and Sammie (nicknames and initials used for privacy). They know what they did; more details on my Tumblr page ("luckystarchild" dot tumblr com). But rest assured that they're helping me with something huge, and I honestly can't thank them enough for that. Please let me know if you have any wishlist LC one-shots I can write for you to thank you for your kindness.

And I want to thank THESE lovely people for coming out and supporting LC last time with their comments. Your support really does keep me going when I don't feel like writing, and I can safely say that this story wouldn't be here without you: MissIdeophobia, noble phantasm, Sorlian, cestlavie, EdenMae, IronDBZ, Pelawen Night, Domitia Ivory, Ouca, xenocanaan, Forthwith16, Bardic Knowledge, MidnightAngelJustForYou, MyWorldHeartBeating, Kaiya Azure, tammywammy9, C S Stars, vodka-and-tea, cezarina, Yakiitori, PretiBurdi, craftscute09, Call Brig on Over, ewokling, Biku-sensei-sez-meow, ThePersonWithTheReallyLongName, buzzk97, Himemiko, MysticWolf71891, Convoluted Compassion.