One block north of Mushiyori University's campus, the subway stop at Nako Square bustled beneath the warm glow of the streetlights. Hugging her light jacket tighter, Michi Kuroki paused under the golden halo of a lamp and eyed the escalator down into the subway's cramped tunnel. The creeping tendrils of a headache had begun to worm out from her temples, and she rocked her weight from heel to heel, willing all the colors and noise and saturation of the busy square to leave her be just for a moment—just for a single breath.

At her elbow, hunched against a stiff fall breeze, Runa Ito heaved her messenger bag higher up her shoulder. "You sure you can't make it tonight, Michi?"

"Sorry. Professor Endo assigned three chapters of reading for Friday's class."

"Three?" Runa rolled her eyes. Red threads of annoyance glimmered around her, highlighting her sharp cheekbones and gleaming against her pale skin, invisible to all but Michi. "Don't these old men know we have lives? Slave drivers, the lot of them."

Michi managed a tight laugh. "Endo's not so bad. And he definitely isn't old."

Far from it.

In fact, two weeks ago, when she'd taken her seat in the cozy lecture hall in Mushiyori University's ancient social sciences building for the only night class of her junior year, she'd thought the handsome brunette leaning against the lectern must be a student. Maybe a TA if she were being generous. Definitely not the professor meant to teach Psychology of Emotion and Motivation.

Even when he'd introduced himself, she'd remained half-convinced he was nothing more than a wise-cracking senior willing to impersonate a professor just to earn a few laughs.

"Well, we'll miss you." Looping her thumb around her bag's strap, Runa turned and walked backward. The finest threads of magenta wove themselves through her red. Disappointment. In Michi. "Text me if you change your mind."

Fishing her headphones from her jacket pocket, Michi nodded. "Not going to happen. Not tonight. But tell Nanako and Yurie hi for me."

Runa snapped a salute. "Will do."

In moments, she disappeared into the crowd, swallowed up by the mixed sea of businessmen in sharp suits and the harried students hurrying off campus. Still, Michi hesitated a heartbeat longer, staring after Runa's dark ponytail. Goodness, she missed the girls. Just two weeks into classes, and the summer holiday already felt like it happened months ago.

And now she was disappointing them. The sting of that hurt—no matter how many times she'd felt it before. Not that it was Runa's fault. Like nearly everyone in Michi's life, Runa had no idea Michi could read her emotions as soon as they arose.

Nor did Runa know of the crippling headaches the threads of emotion brought with them. As far as Runa was concerned, Michi was still seeing a doctor for the migraines that had plagued her for five years now. She remained utterly unaware of the cursed tunnel to Demon World that had opened and gifted Michi with a psychic territory she had no use for.

Drawing a deep breath into her lungs, Michi closed her eyes and blocked out not just the milling pedestrians but the tapestry of threads woven all around her—an embroidery in so many brilliant shades of emotion and feeling and connection that it left an afterimage against her eyes, as bright as if she'd stared at the sun. The Loom of Life.

With deliberate slowness, she fit her headphones into her ears and stuffed her hands into her pockets, then faced the subway's escalators. She could do this. The subway was a tangled knot of threads so overwhelming that the migraines it sometimes left her with would keep her bedridden for hours after, but it was also the only way home.

And it was her hellish teacher's assignment. Ride the subway. Practice reading the Loom.

Bracing a hand against the escalator's moving banister to keep steady, she stepped aboard and let it carry her down, deep into the musty tunnel. Commuters packed the platform below, bunched together between the thick support pillars stretching to the ceiling.

Eyes locked on the ground, Michi slipped through the crowd, dodging elbows and wriggling around a clump of high school students in purple uniforms until she reached the yellow safety line at the platform's edge. There she waited, tapping a booted toe against the yellow paint and staring into the tunnel's dark maw.

A sign overhead indicated the next inbound train's arrival was imminent, and sure enough, the railcar came rattling out of the darkness, passengers packed within. It ground to a halt, one set of doors directly before her. Just as she'd planned. She'd needed only three days to learn exactly where the operators stopped the first car, and now it was only too easy to predict where the doors would align.

As they clattered open, allowing a stream of commuters to file outward, she kept a tight grip on her schoolbag, and once the last passenger disembarked, she darted through the doorway. Three open seats awaited her. She picked the closest, sliding into the worn plastic beside a young man. His head was dipped over a book, long strands of red hair spilling over his shoulder, but as she shrugged off her bag and eased it between her feet, winding one heeled boot through its strap as an added precaution, he glanced up and offered a polite smile.

His eyes were the most stunning viridian she'd ever seen.

Quick as he'd looked up, his attention returned to his reading. It took all her self-control not to stare at the side of his lean, handsome face.

Her brutish instructor's voice came back to her. Pick a single target. Focus on their strands. Read their Loom.

In the tight confines of the train, it was a task easier barked than done, but Michi forced herself to relax. The only way to master her territory was to practice. Endlessly. After all, five years in, she still felt helpless in crowds like this.

Ignoring her building headache, she focused on her seat partner, letting her psychic eye tease his threads from the knotted tangle pulsing around her. Or, at least, so she tried.

His Loom evaded her as no person's ever had before. Normally she could hardly keep from seeing someone's emotions woven across their skin in jewel bright tones. Yet his slipped away from her, as if slicked with oil or hidden beneath a veil.

She bit her chapped bottom lip, sneaking a sideways peek at him. Only then, as she took in the defined cut of his jaw, did his threads flicker into being. Muted grays and yellows. Almost the storm silver of exhaustion. Nearly the goldenrod of discomfort. But not properly either.

Again, she felt the sensation that his Loom was hidden from her, as though at a distance or through warped glass.

Never had someone defied her territory like he did.

When the train rattled to a halt six stops later and he made to stand, she was so mired in her confusion she forgot to shift out of his way. In the end, it took the soft tenor of his voice—his actual words indiscernible over the tinny clamor of her headphones—to startle her into motion.

Blushing, she mumbled an apology and scooted her knees aside to let him pass. He flashed another brief smile, the barest glimmer of what she thought might be cobalt amusement flickering through his threads, and then he was gone, swept out with the departing crowd, leaving her alone. Frazzled and shaken. So much so that when the railcar thundered into her stop five minutes later, she nearly forgot to disembark.

As it turned out, she might as well have spent the night with Runa and the girls, because after that handsome, unreadable stranger, she certainly didn't get any psychology reading done. Not a single page.

On Thursdays, her classes ended before noon, and she was home long before rush hour, tucked safely within her cozy apartment, cut off from the Loom of Life by the psychic wards she'd plastered on the walls. She tried not to spend the day thinking of him—that redheaded stranger—but he flitted into her thoughts, his quiet smile and muted threads distracting her from the essay assigned for Nordic Literature.

How had he done it? Why couldn't she see his Loom like she could everyone else's?

By Friday night, as she and Runa trekked to the subway stop in Nako Square, those questions had begun rattling around in her head so insistently that for once she didn't entirely dread her ride home. If he were there, commuting as he had been Wednesday, maybe she'd be able to work out how to see his Loom.

It was a big maybe.

Still, after she bid Runa goodbye, she didn't linger to see her friend off, instead loping down the escalator, bumping her way past a stream of professionals in well-fitted suits. The redhead had worn charcoal slacks and an unadorned dress shirt beneath a brown leather jacket. Too elegant for a fellow Mushiyori University student. Which meant he likely worked in the district.

With any luck, he'd be riding the same train as before.

The crowd on the platform was more agitated than usual. A forecasted rainstorm had instilled the rotted mustard yellow of anxiety through the commuters' Looms. It seemed fitting. After all, though Michi couldn't see her own threads, she didn't need her territory to identify the unease coiling in her chest.

She hoped he was here.

She wasn't quite sure what she'd do if he weren't. Put up search posters with a rendering of his stunning face? Hire a private investigator? Ask the ornery demon Hiei to hunt him down?

Despite the nerves jangling within her, she couldn't help a laugh at that last option. As if the demon would ever do her such a favor. She imagined he'd sooner gut her on that dreadful sword of his.

In the end, she needn't have worried about drawing up search parties.

The redhead sat one row back from where she'd last seen him, his head dipped forward—reading, no doubt. To her immense relief, the seat beside his was unoccupied.

Just as she had Wednesday, she wore her headphones, but this time, when he raised his head to smile, she dragged one free of her ear. At the sight of her, recognition dawned in his enigmatic eyes. She seized on a courage she could hardly recognize as her own and offered an answering grin, little more than a quick tilt of her lips.

"Evening," he said, his voice warm as melted chocolate.

Her toes curled inside her leather boots. "Sorry for not getting out of your way more quickly. On Wednesday, I mean." A flush warmed her cheeks, and she dropped her gaze to her hands, twining her fingers into a series of knots. "Promise it won't happen again."

His chuckle put his voice's beauty to shame. "Hardly an offense worth an apology."

She snuck another glance at him. "And yet an offense?"

Same as last time, she couldn't be quite sure if the fresh rush of color in his threads was cobalt amusement or something else. Maybe the teal of happiness? It was hard to say, but his bout of renewed laughter confirmed it was hardly something horrid.

"A poor choice of words perhaps."

All around them, the Loom glinted, a weave of rainbow colors that awoke the first twinges of a headache behind her eyes, yet he remained nearly unreadable, his threads dulled almost beyond comprehension. If she weren't focused, she might not have seen them at all.

And again, it begged the question: how was he doing it? If he was doing it on purpose at all…

It was a hardly an inquiry she could pose to him. Stranger, why can't I see your Loom? He'd think her unhinged. Utterly deranged. She didn't want that—not least because his smiles had proved enthralling, and she imagined he wouldn't spare many for the crazed girl stalking him in the subway.

Instead of questions, she offered her name. "Nice to meet you. I'm Michi. Michi Kuroki."

His brows rose, and his threads rippled with a green she couldn't easily name. Washed out as his Loom was, it was hard to say if it was the emerald shine of curiosity or the lime shade of surprise. Between the two, she'd guess the latter. After all, her forwardness had shocked her, too.

He dipped his chin in polite greeting. "Shuichi Minamino." When he offered a hand for her to shake, his fingers long and lean, she noticed he'd closed the book in his lap. "A pleasure to meet you, Michi."

She blushed anew, fumbling for a response as his hand closed around hers, warm and supple as fine leather, but before words returned to her, the railcar ground to a standstill. He rose, his book in one hand, her fingers still held in the other. How had they reached his stop already?

"Have a lovely night," he murmured, the words nearly swallowed up in the crush of movement as passengers departed the train.

She swung her knees to the side. Releasing her hand with a gentle parting squeeze, he eased past and broke for the doors. She stared after him, and as the subway car lurched back into motion, she watched him out the window, his red hair a beacon amongst an ocean of dark heads.

At the last moment, as the tunnel walls closed in, swallowing her up, he turned back.

This time she could've sworn his threads were emerald.

Same as his eyes.

Michi wasn't due to see her mentor for three more weeks, and thanks to Genkai's stubborn refusal to put a landline in her temple and the absolutely abysmal cell signal out in the mountains, Michi had no way to contact the psychic about the mysterious Shuichi. She had a million questions to ask the grouchy woman. Was Shuichi a sign of her territory fading away? Could the muted effect of his Loom be replicated? Had she at last stumbled upon a way to be free of her unwanted powers?

But a trip to the mountain shrine was a haul she couldn't rationalize, not when the assigned homework load for her fall classes kept her awake until midnight each day, pouring over textbooks and analyzing old psychology clinical trials. More and more, it seemed Professor Endo was precisely the slave driver Runa had accused him of being, and with a dozen assignments looming, she didn't even have time for her volunteer work, let alone trekking out to see Genkai on a whim.

Which meant it was up to her to work out Shuichi's secrets.

Hoping he would be there on her ride home each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday became the sole focus of her walk from campus with Runa, and she knew she was doing her friend a disservice with her distracted half-answers as they parted ways every night, but the mystifying quandary Shuichi presented drew her inexorably. Not even the ever-present magenta of Runa's disappointment could detract from Michi's need to work out the redhead's secrets.

The seat beside him was almost always empty. How he managed that she hadn't yet ascertained. Perhaps he traveled with a friend who departed at the Nako Square stop each evening.

He made for pleasant—if quiet—company. With her attention focused on his dim threads, she could almost forget the rest of the tangled Loom occupying the railcar's tight innards, and though they rarely made conversation, an affection for the calm he offered grew in her unbidden.

On their fifth encounter, a week after she introduced herself, she boarded the car and found him waiting, his book already closed in his lap, his head up and emerald eyes alert. The curl of his smile sent a shiver down her spine, and it nestled at the hollow of her back, a fluttering nervousness taking root in her chest as she settled beside him.

"Evening, Michi," he said as she stuffed her headphones into her pocket. He spoke her name with a careful precision—as if it were some precious spell and mispronouncing it even a hair might have disastrous consequences. "How are you on this unseasonably chilly night?"

Surprised at the warmth in his tone, she wiggled her fingers at him from within a knitted mitten. "Caught thoroughly off guard. Luckily I found these stuffed in my bag as I was leaving campus. You?"

"I'm well." He tilted his head a degree, his long locks tumbling over his shoulder. The twinkling of his eyes confirmed the curiosity twining through his Loom. "By campus, do you happen to mean Mushiyori University? Are you a student there?"

Oh…

She hadn't meant to give such details away. Other than exchanging names and soft smiles, they'd hardly spoken before tonight, yet here she was revealing where she attended school to a near stranger. If Nanako were here, she wouldn't hesitate to declare this the beginning of Michi's undoing. If Michi ended up dead in a gutter, her demise could be traced back to this exact moment of imprudence—or so Nanako would be presume.

Michi stamped out a giggle at her imaginary Nanako's displeasure. Goodness knew the last thing she needed was to start laughing at nothing. If she did, Shuichi would no doubt think her just as unbalanced as if she started prattling on about Looms and threads and psychic territories.

At her uncertain pause, his smile reemerged and he added, "I graduated last spring. I miss it. Though perhaps not the evening classes."

To her make-believe Nanako's immense distress, that seemed to be all it took to unstopper her tongue. "You have that all wrong. Morning classes—of which I have far too many—are the real bane of a college student's existence."

He hid a laugh behind a graceful hand, and she ran through a quick bout of math. If he'd graduated after the last school year, that made him what? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?

She'd certainly never seen him around campus before—one wouldn't forget hair or eyes as breathtaking as his. Nor had she passed him on the trains, though she'd lived with her cousin Asato the last two years, and the best route to their shared apartment had been on the subway line picked up at the opposite end of campus, not the one at Nako Square. Perhaps they had simply never crossed paths.

The dull blue she'd begun to recognize as his substitute for amusement glimmered in his threads. "Ah, morning classes. That must be why I don't see you on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

"You've figured me out."

As the railcar lurched into a station and the doors sprung open with a beep, she realized they'd run out of time. Somehow the train had already reached his stop.

He stood fluidly, his book cradled in the crook of his arm, a briefcase slung over the same shoulder. "A shame," he said as she turned sideways, creating space for him to pass. "My seat partners those days aren't nearly so charming."

His parting wink left her breathless.

Their interactions changed after that, light conversation filling their brief time together on the train. Shuichi asked innocuous questions, his eyes lit with a mirth that set butterflies loose within her chest.

What's always playing in those headphones of yours? Classical. Movie scores. Wordless noise to block out the subway's commotion. It is hectic, isn't it?

Oh, if only he knew.

But she kept that secret to herself.

Any particularly good classes on your docket this semester? The Psychology of Emotion and Motivation. Neuroscience. Nordic Literature and Its Intersection with Modern Video Games. That last one had baffled him, and true emerald—clear and bright—shot through his threads. It seemed his Loom was capable of regular color if he felt an emotion strongly enough.

But for all his inquiries into her life, he gave her no room to pose questions in return. Always he seemed ready with his next query, listening raptly and yet poised to move the conversation forward at every turn.

Not that she would have known what precisely to ask him. Where he worked perhaps. What he'd majored in at Mushiyori University. Questions as equally inane as his own, grazing the surface but not pushing any farther.

Still, as her next lesson with Genkai drew closer, promising an endless train ride out to the mountains, the need to unravel his Loom's secrets grew murkier. If she told the old psychic about Shuichi, what would that do to these simple commutes at his side? He would become an assignment, a puzzle to solve—and maybe he should have been that already, but somehow the lines had begun to blur. She enjoyed his company for his quick smiles and steady wit, but also for the oasis of calm he offered, the muted reprieve from the Loom of Life's blinding light.

She wasn't ready to give that up—to alter it in irreparable ways.

If anything, she wanted more of it.

Maybe that was why she caught his wrist as he rose to leave her the third Wednesday after their first encounter, only a handful of days before she was meant to see Genkai again. And maybe that was why, when her lips parted, the question that slid forth was utterly unbelievable.

"Shuichi, would you like to grab dinner sometime?" An instant blush scorched into her cheeks. Goodness, what was she thinking? Yet rather than take the offer back, her next words inexplicably doubled-down. "Or just see each other somewhere off this crowded train?"

There was that unnamable green again, twisting through his washed out Loom. Lime surprise? Emerald curiosity? Some indefinable mix of the two? She didn't give it too much thought, not in the face of the color woven beneath it. A mottled yellow. Impossible to fit into one of her neat categories, but a bad sign nonetheless. Yellows never boded well. Goldenrod discomfort, mustard anxiety, the buttery yellow of boredom—all bad.

Not a single one the sort of reaction a girl wanted after being so foolishly improper.

She relinquished his wrist. "I'm sorry. You don't have to answer that. Pretend I never—"

He dipped his long, slim hand into his jacket pocket. It reappeared with a business card fitted between his middle and pointer fingers. New passengers were flooding aboard, and he hurried to press the card into her aimlessly fluttering hands. Just as the doors began to close, he darted through them, but before they could seal tight, he called back over his shoulder, his eyes flashing with teasing amusement, "Text me. We'll work out a time."

AN: So a Kurama focused story… I never—NEVER—thought I'd be writing one of these. But then one day while drafting Once We've Fallen, Michi came tumbling into my head and I just knew she was destined to get tangled up with Kurama.

The idea for her threads is not mine (rather is belongs to the brilliant Susan Dennard, author of TRUTHWITCH and the other books in the ongoing Witchlands series), but I'm adapting it here as a psychic territory. I'm really looking forward to exploring it!

Michi has all sorts of ties to our beloved gang, though she doesn't realize it yet. I can't wait to start weaving together all the disparate threads of this story. Hopefully it's going to be a fun ride!

Also, I know YYH is set before the proliferation of cell phones and personal music devices and all that jazz, but I'm going to fudge the technology lines here. Forgive me?i