Archive of Our Own

Hajime slams her foot on the brakes, the image that had flown by at the corner of her eye already imprinted in her mind.

She stares at the road ahead, at the snowy darkness beyond what is illuminated by her headlights, the sudden stop making her car skid on the ice for one terrifyingly long moment. Her heart hammering in her chest, she looks through the rearview mirror for the figure she'd seen, before fully turning in her seat to search behind her.

There, framed by the empty sky and the dark trees in the distance, as fluorescent as the snow in this empty suburban road, is a woman. She is dressed in all white, just a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of cotton pants, the cloth nearly black from the blood soaked into it. She has her back to Hajime, curled into herself as she staggers through the snow.

Hajime’s breath catches in her throat as she watches the woman trip and nearly fall. She throws her seatbelt over her head and jumps out of her car. “Miss?” She calls out, her breath instantly turning into fog. “Miss, are you okay?”

She receives no reply. The woman keeps walking.

Hajime quickly looks around the area, ducks back in to grab a roll of gauze from the glovebox, and slams the door shut, pulling her collar tighter around her neck and jogging over to the woman.

“Miss?”

The scent of blood grows more potent with every step closer, biting past the sharp sting of the winter air and thick enough to make Hajime gag. She coughs, jamming a fist against her chest as she fights back against the sick feeling in her stomach.

The woman walks, slouched, chin tucked into her collarbones, the frayed ends of her wet hair grazing the curve of her jaw. She is shivering severely, her limbs trembling and weak from the cold, the fabric of her clothes too thin for the season with mud and dirty melted snow soaking into it and making it cling to her body. Hajime’s eyes run over the exposed skin of the woman’s hands and the back of her neck where it isn’t obscured by her short brown hair. The skin of her throat is black with bruises and open lesions, the same injuries extending down her arms, with small cuts all over her palms and dirt under her fingernails.

Hajime stops an arm’s length away, a hand hovering over the woman’s shoulder. “Miss?”

The woman stops.

For one long moment, she says nothing, the chattering of her teeth audible in the small space between them. Then, minutely, she turns her head and looks right at Hajime through the sheer curtain of her hair. She stares, her breath so thin it barely moves the strands, her lips nearly blue, and her tan skin tinged with gray. Before Hajime can speak, the woman makes a small wounded noise, her eyelids flutter shut, and her body begins to tip over.

Hajime jumps to catch her. She is freezing cold to the touch, and despite her frail appearance, she is heavy in her arms. Hajime checks her pulse, her breathing, both weak but there. There’s a pool of blood at their feet, trickling down Hajime’s arms and sliding off of the waterproof shell of her jacket. Gently, she sets her down, a hand protectively cupped around the back of her head as she helps the woman sit. Another quick scan over the woman’s wounds and Hajime pulls back the folded collar of her shirt, peering down her clavicle only to see more bruising. She uncoils the gauze she’d taken with her and starts wrapping it where she sees blood, starting with the worst of the damage on the woman’s throat.

Hajime’s hands do not shake, she does not stop until she has dressed every wound, her work crude with just gauze to use and she can already see the woman begin to bleed through the layers of thread. She shrugs off her jacket and drapes it around her. It’s tight on her shoulders, but she manages to zip it up to her chin. It’ll do for now. Hajime will deal with the rest of her injuries at home.

Hajime scans their surroundings. They're at a crossroads, pitch black save for the orange glow from the lamppost overhead and the blinding white headlights of her car. She looks down the path where the woman had been coming from, the one that leads to a vast swath of rice fields, and further, into a forest with an unpaved road and a river cutting through it. There are only two sets of footprints around them, hers and the woman’s, and apart from the lines she had carved into the snow with her car, there are no other visible tracks.

Whoever brought this woman here is long gone.

A pit forms in Hajime’s stomach. Accidents aren’t the only things that happen in dark and empty areas like these.

She carries the woman to her car, careful as she places her into the passenger’s seat and shuts the door. Hajime rounds the front of her car, stopping outside the driver’s seat and scanning the area one last time for any sign of life, for any sound other than the wailing wind. Desperate to find anything, she even tries holding her breath.

Nothing. Other than Hajime and the stranger bleeding out in her car, there’s nothing out here.

Hajime is running out of time. She gets in, knocks the heat up a couple notches, and after a one last check on her companion, she drives home.

—

Hajime's neighborhood is quiet, the other houses just about as lively as her own, all of her neighbors an acquaintance of hers in some way, every single one of them aware of the work she does and the type of patients she brings home. It's for this reason nobody bats an eye at the stench of blood that drifts out the windows or at the frequency with which Hajime has her car interior cleaned. As far as they're concerned, she's just being a responsible medical professional, and if another unfortunate soul is found, they all know who to call for help.

Hajime lives in a modest house, small but with plenty of room for her to work with. Outside is a parking space just big enough for her car to fit in, with four tall walls and a black iron gate enclosing the area and shutting it off from the rest of the world. Upstairs is her bedroom, largely unused due to the long nights spent working, as well as a living room, a bathroom, a small balcony, and one guest room that she has long since repurposed into a library. Two storage rooms, another bathroom, the kitchen, her office, and the clinic make up the layout of the first floor.

The clinic is sectioned by a curtain into two halves: the operating room and the inpatient area. It's just about as much space Hajime can have in such a small house. While the operating room holds a good portion of Hajime’s medicine stock and equipment for urgent care, the inpatient area is furnished sparsely, just a hospital bed, an IV pole, a nightstand, a cabinet, and a space heater.

By the time Hajime pulls into her driveway, most of the woman’s bleeding has already stopped.

Hajime has to clean her up first; she peels off her clothes, washes out most of the soil and blood, then pats her dry. Naked on Hajime's operating table, she looks as if carved out of marble, the muscle and fat in her body frozen solid, her flat chest barely moving when she breathes. Hajime examines her for any other injuries, paying close attention to the ruined flesh of her throat. The pattern of bruising around her arms and neck indicates she’d been attacked, while all of the gashes on her hands, especially on her fingers, hadn’t been from a fight, the dirt there an indicator that she might have dragged herself out of the ground where she had woken up in, getting cut on the sharp rocks along the way.

The scent of her blood is thick in the air, impossible to ignore, seeping into the unseen corners of the room, sure to hang around long after Hajime has disinfected everything.

All clean, dressed in dry clothes, and enveloped by two blankets, the woman looks even more fragile, the grey tint of her skin prominent against the white of her bandages. She’s cold to the touch, but at least her heart is beating.

Hajime takes a step back to breathe, to truly look at her for the first time tonight. The thought that had been plaguing her all evening returns, the undeniable fact that she looks just like every other person Hajime has found on that road near the forest.

The woman needs a transfusion next. Hajime has a decent supply of blood in her house, and it doesn’t take her long to figure out the woman's type, to then warm up the blood and finally begin the transfusion. The sun has already risen by the time the second blood bag is emptied and Hajime can safely hook the woman up to a bag of dextrose.

The final step is to take two unlabelled vials from her medical fridge and inject their contents into the woman’s IV line. A drug she’d created with a couple of her colleagues, a single dose is typically enough to prevent an infection and alleviate pain for several hours. With the intensity of the woman’s injuries, Hajime administers a second dose.

The woman finally stabilized, Hajime makes a call. Sawamura picks up on the fourth ring.

“Hello? Iwaizumi?”

“I'm gonna have to take a couple days off,” Hajime says, slouching in her chair. She still hasn't taken a shower and her makeshift OR reeks of blood and sludge. “Found another one.”

“No problem. Keep me updated, yeah?”

“Of course. I owe you.”

Sawamura barks a laugh. “Send me another batch of the stuff and we're even. Take care of yourself, Iwaizumi. And good luck on the fledgling.”

—

It’s a long two days of constant monitoring, blood testing, and making sure to switch out the woman's IVs. She has multiple bouts of consciousness, all brief and never lasting for more than a minute or two. Hajime never strays too far from the clinic, keeping a close eye on any complications that could come up and purging restless energy by pacing up and down the room.

On the morning of the third day, the woman wakes up.

Hajime is in the clinic taking inventory when it happens. She quickly pockets her notes and crosses the threshold to the inpatient area.

“You’re awake! You must be—”

The woman’s eyes are open, deep brown irises the clearest they've ever been since their first meeting three nights ago, and she’s staring right at Hajime.

The words die on Hajime’s tongue, taken aback by the intensity of her stare. She averts her gaze. “My, uh…” At the corner of her eye, she spots the woman trying to sit up, her arms too weak to push off of the bed. “Oh, here.”

Hajime presses on a button at the bedframe, and the bed slowly folds in half, allowing the woman to sit up with her back supported. She sneaks glances at the woman while waiting for the mechanism to slide into place. Aside from her injuries, she looks barely improved from the night Hajime found her, the skin under her eyes still dark even though a drop of color has returned to her lips. Hajime hasn’t wrapped her in bandages after the first day, once all her cuts healed over and there was no risk of them accidentally reopening, and thus her bruises are impossible to miss, the rich purples fading into splotches of green and yellow.

Hajime clears her throat. “You’re probably confused.” She offers her a shaky smile. “Let me get a seat and I’ll explain, okay?”

Hajime leaves to bring a chair over from the operating room, feeling the woman's eyes on her back. The woman is calm, eerily so, but Hajime has seen worse first reactions. Plenty of Hajime’s past patients refused to do anything but stare, fearful and suspicious of the random stranger who’d taken them in, and it’s because of this that she’s careful to communicate every move clearly, to give them distance and to act slowly so as to not frighten them.

“My name is Iwaizumi Hajime,” she says once seated. The woman blinks, a splash of surprise coloring her gaunt face. Hajime takes the lack of a negative reaction as a good sign. “I’m a medical doctor. We are currently inside my house. I brought you here two nights ago, early in the morning of January 4th. I was driving home from work when I found you in the crosswalk nearby. You were injured, covered in blood, and at risk of hypothermia. Aside from multiple open wounds on your throat, limbs, and abdomen, you were covered in bruises and had severe blood loss.”

Finally, the woman breaks eye contact, and Hajime holds her breath as she looks at her own body as if seeing it for the first time. Her lips pursed, she presses her fingers down on her abdomen, and Hajime sits up with a start at the wince that flashes on her face.

“Are you in pain?” She asks. “Your external injuries have healed nicely over the past three days, but without the right equipment, I couldn’t check for internal issues. I’ve been regularly administering pain relief medicine, but if you’re feeling any pain—”

“No.”

Her voice is stable despite its lack of use, clearer and deeper than Hajime expected it to be.

Hajime coughs. “E… Excuse me?”

The woman tilts her head, impassive once more. She blinks slowly. “I’m not in any pain, doc.”

Hajime glances at the spot the woman pressed down on, then back to her face. “I’d like to examine you later, if that’s fine. Just to make sure. Regardless, that’s good to hear.” She smiles. “And it’s good to hear your voice. Some people can’t speak so soon after waking up for the first time.”

From the nightstand, Hajime picks up a pen and the clipboard of Oikawa’s files. “Now that you know who I am and everything I know, can you tell me your name?”

“Oikawa Tooru. 35.”

“We’re the same age, then.” Hajime writes her name down in hiragana for now. “Can you recall anything from two nights ago? Like what happened before you were brought to this area, or who you last saw?”

A long silence passes, and she shakes her head. “No, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Hajime merely nods, noting on the file Oikawa’s lack of an answer. Patients commonly have trouble recalling even the most basic of information, let alone something so traumatic. “There’s no need to apologize, Oikawa-san. But maybe you can recall where you’re from? Any family you’d want to contact?”

Another shake of her head. “No. Sorry.”

“Just your name and age, then? That’s alright.” Hajime offers her a small smile. “Perhaps it’s too many questions at once. And you’ve just woken up, too. You shouldn’t worry too much about how little you remember and just rest for now. Your physical recovery is our current priority.”

Hajime stands up and carefully puts the chair back to its earlier spot. She pulls a stethoscope from one of the drawers in the exam room and flips to the second page on her clipboard, where more information about Oikawa is printed. “That being said, I’d like to conduct another examination of your injuries now, if that’s alright?” Oikawa nods. “Great! Just stay seated for a bit, but, here, lean forward on this pillow, and I’ll check your lungs.”

Hajime moves slowly through her examination, taking notes as she goes from one area to the next. Oikawa, for the most part, stays expressionless throughout it, providing concise answers to Hajime’s questions when she tests her vision and her hearing, only giving some low grunts as she shifts from sitting to lying on her back, and again as Hajime checks on her abdomen and neck. One look at Oikawa’s bruises and it’s clear they’re all healing nicely, with no threat of starting a fever nor developing sepsis. It's a remarkable improvement by normal standards and already healing faster than most of Hajime’s past patients, but it’s nothing she hasn't already seen before. All thanks to that drug she has been regularly administering over the past three days.

Her biggest reaction so far is when Hajime attempts to bend her leg at the knee. It pulls a hiss from her, the wrinkle in her brow staying there once Hajime has set her leg down and as she digs her thumbs into the tightness in the tendons. Checking her other leg earns her much of the same response. Hajime scribbles down more notes.

“It doesn’t hurt, doc,” Oikawa says. “Just a little tight at the knee.”

Hajime nods. “With medicine and the right stretches, It'll go away in time.”

She finishes up the examination with an explanation of her findings, the clipboard flipped to a page containing a diagram of the human body, Oikawa’s injuries laid out in small, tidy writing. “Do you have any questions, Oikawa-san?”

“No.”

Hajime flips the board to the first page and slips it under her arm. “Well, if you ever have any, feel free to reach out. You can press this—” she points to one of the buttons on the bed frame— “to call for me. You can also use it if you need help with anything.”

“Got it.” She looks up at Hajime and smiles. “Thank you. For everything.”

Hajime can’t look away from how the smile softens Oikawa’s entire face, nor can she ignore the way the tension in her chest instantly unwinds at the sight of it. “Don’t mention it. I’ll leave you to rest, alright? Again, if you need anything, I’m just a buzzer away.”

She exits the clinic, softly closing the door behind her, briefly going through her notes and scribbling additional inferences in the margins of the diagram, then frowning at the page while she walks to her office down the hall. The room is small, only containing a desk, a personal computer, a small fridge, four large metal file cabinets, all of Hajime’s blood testing equipment, as well as a futon folded up inside the trunk in the corner of the room.

Hajime sits at her desk and boots up her computer. She removes the pages from the clipboard and puts them under the scanner one by one, compiling each file and then adding them into the most recent folder, renamed from ‘Patient #720’ to ‘Oikawa Tooru’.

Over the next week, she’ll have to keep an eye on Oikawa’s ability to keep fluids down. Solids will take much longer, but it shouldn’t hurt to get groceries, and Hajime will have to check on her blood supply in the event they’ll need more in the coming weeks.

When Hajime finishes transferring her notes, she closes the document window, shuts off her computer, and returns the pages to the board. She leans back on her chair and props her feet up on the desk, the papers on her lap flipped to the page with the diagram.

Hajime already knows how this goes. She recognized Oikawa’s mangled throat, the bruises all over her body, her high blood loss; the same conditions she’d see on all of her patients. A rare few would be worse off with broken bones, missing limbs, or chunks carved out of their flesh, and Hajime helps all of them as much as she can with what little that she has. Oikawa is one of the lucky ones.

Hajime's miracle drug does all the heavy lifting. She’d inject it once they’re stabilized and it speeds up their healing process, turning weeks into a matter of days. A little over a week later and her patients will begin showing signs of turning. The loss of appetite always comes first, solved only by feeding them red meats and iron supplements. Soon they’ll start changing physically, gaining sharper teeth and nails, increased physical strength, heightened senses, and a growing weakness to daylight. If left hungry, the transformation will continue, growing in severity, the fledgling becoming less humanoid the longer they are deprived of blood.

Hajime always drives by them on that lonely road, a stone's throw away from the river where attack victims are often dumped. Most are swallowed up by the earth and the rushing waters or they perish crawling out. Only an unlucky few survive. They get out, they try to walk home, and when they look for help, they find Hajime.

People have been scared for her, friends and fledglings alike, worried that she would one day get devoured for her efforts. Decades into the business and she’s still here, still the master of her house, able to hold her own against the beasts she helps transition. Pain is inevitable in her line of work, and after a century of getting acquainted with all sorts of teeth piercing through the flesh and sinew of her body, the novelty is honestly lost on her.

It’s tough work, and she is the only one willing to see it through. It has always been easier to just kill fledglings than to go through the trouble of easing that transition, the undead life never really worth the pain of turning. Many of her friends care little for humans and fledglings, but even they cannot look away from the carnage that is left when their kind gets too greedy. Hajime is the one they go to whenever they find another fledgling, and despite their limited praise, at least they're kind enough to fund most of her equipment.

Still, it never gets any easier. Even with all of this support, Hajime is alone. Nobody wants to do the dirty work, to hold the hand of an individual near death, to relieve their suffering one unit of blood at a time, then risk injury and death for a creature damned to live a second life they did not ask for.

Hajime’s gaze drifts to the sharps disposal container on the table on the other side of the room, still yet to be emptied after today's routine injections and the tests she'd run earlier that morning. She had bumped down the dose of her miracle drug after the first night so as to not override Oikawa's system with distilled vampire saliva, carefully keeping her transition at a nice and steady pace.

Hajime flips to a later page on the board and checks the calendar where she had drafted Oikawa’s improvement. She’s off schedule, her progress a day faster than the average. Perhaps it's a good sign. Hopefully, as Oikawa regains her strength, so too will she recover her memory.

—

Oikawa isn’t much for conversation after that. She spends the rest of her first week asleep, the periods of wakefulness growing longer with each day that passes. Every time, much like the first time, she stares, fascinated with Hajime and everything she does. Other than that, her responses stay curt, her expressions flat, and her memories inaccessible.

Thankfully, her condition continues to improve steadily. Hajime takes a proper leave from work to allow her to better take care of Oikawa and to keep an eye out for the first signs of her turning. It’s a cycle of testing her blood, examining her daily, checking if she can finally keep down fluids, as well as helping her stretch and move her limbs, and taking her to the bathroom. Hajime has also begun to introduce iron into Oikawa’s system. By the fifth day, Oikawa can reliably drink water and swallow sips of the soup Hajime makes for her. By the seventh, she can sit up on her own.

It’s on the tenth day that Hajime starts getting confused. Oikawa has shown no signs of turning, confirmed by Hajime’s daily examinations and blood tests. None of her results match any of Hajime’s past patients. Simple observation told her as much — aside from her teeth remaining the same size and sharpness from the night Hajime found her, her appetite hasn’t changed as drastically as it should have.

By all accounts, she is perfectly human.

Hajime has tried everything to make sure, even tentatively easing her off the iron to see what would happen. All that came of it was Oikawa losing the bit of energy that had returned to her in the past week.

It’s clear Hajime was wrong. Perhaps Oikawa wasn’t a victim of a vampire attack as she originally thought, or she was, and whatever they did to her wasn’t enough to turn her into one of them, the first and only one of Hajime’s patients to survive an attack and stay human.

Herein lay the issue: fledglings heal faster the further into their transformation they are. Since Oikawa has proven herself not a vampire, the speed of her recovery will be at a snail’s pace in comparison to Hajime’s previous patients. She will need to stay under medical care until she fully recovers, and with the massive gap in her memory, this might just take several months.

Hajime has to switch strategies, change the timetable and start with the basics. She has a regular human patient now, and as much as it hurts to admit it, she hasn’t been this hands-on with a human patient’s recovery in a long, long while.

“Is there a problem, sensei?”

Hajime looks up from her clipboard, the ink under her pen still wet, a blob of black at the end of her pristine handwriting. She sits bedside on a stool, her clipboard resting flat on the mattress, just about done with their daily examination, the sleeves of Oikawa’s shirt pulled back to reveal the brown patches of her bruises slowly healing. On the bed, Oikawa looks between Hajime’s face and the page full of notes.

“Huh?”

“You were frowning.”

“A—Ah, well… you see…” Hajime glances at the page, all of her notes reminding her to do research, her knowledge of human recovery spotty. She bites her lip. “Oikawa-san, have you remembered anything from the night you got attacked?”

Oikawa blinks, caught off guard by the sudden question. She shakes her head. “The last thing I remember was walking out in the snow, sensei.”

“And before that?”

“Still nothing.” Hajime sighs. Oikawa chews at the inside of her cheek. “Is that what was bothering you?”

“One of them.” She taps at the board. “At the rate of your recovery, I can foresee you being able to go home in two to three weeks’ time. I can refer you to a PT then, but that won’t require any more than a couple visits a week.” Hajime looks at her, squinting. “The problem is with your memory. How can you go home if you don’t remember where that is?”

Oikawa frowns. “I can’t.”

“Right. But if you stay here, and then I find someone else who needs my help… It’ll be difficult for me to aid two people at the same time. I don’t have the room nor the resources to do so, plus I still have my full-time job to go back to.”

It’d be dangerous to still have Oikawa around the next time Hajime brings home another fledgling. Her house only has so much room, and she can only hide so much behind closed doors and shuttered curtains.

She considers telling her the truth. About the dumping ground near the river and the centuries guiding Hajime’s every move. About all of this equipment and why Oikawa can’t stay. It would be a huge weight off of Hajime’s shoulders to no longer keep it a secret, and even though Oikawa won’t turn, she at least deserves to know the truth of what happened to her.

“I was thinking of having you moved to a public hospital,” Hajime says instead, and she slips her pen into her breast pocket. “My leave from work will end sometime this week, and if I let you stay here, I will no longer be able to monitor you as closely as I have so far. A hospital will have both the equipment and the staff to assist you in your recovery. They may even have the resources to track down your family. And since you’ve stabilized, transporting you to one won’t be too difficult either.”

Oikawa is quiet, merely listening to Hajime speak at first. Then, in a soft voice, “you’re letting me go? Do I owe you any money?”

“My services are free, Oikawa-san, and the hospital won’t cost you either.” Hajime turns to look at her, finds Oikawa frowning at her lap, mouth pursed. “I’ll make sure a friend of mine receives you. They’ll take care of you there, better than what I can currently provide.”

“You’ve done a fair job taking care of me, sensei.” She raises her head and meets Hajime’s gaze, that unwithering stare pinning her in place once more. “You’re the professional. I’ll follow through with what you think is best.”

What’s best… “Well, it’s an unprecedented case, so I’m gonna have to make a couple of phone calls before we can go through with it…”

The thought of all the paperwork alone is enough to make her skin crawl. Regardless, with Hajime’s limited time and resources, having Oikawa under the care of experts is still the best course of action. She pulls her phone out and opens her contacts, mentally keeping track of who to call once she’s out of the room.

“But you help plenty of people, I’m guessing?” Oikawa asks, glancing around the room, past the parted curtain to the other half of the clinic. “Not all doctors have all of this equipment in their houses, after all.”

Hajime frowns at the screen, not looking up as she comes across plenty of old, dead contacts. She deletes them one by one. “It’s not often, but I suppose I do help a lot of people. This neighborhood is pretty quiet, and the area outside of it is empty. A lot of, ah, incidents happen out there, and even if we go by your case alone, the injuries can get very severe. I just do what I can to help.”

“And how far out is the nearest hospital, sensei?”

“It’s a thirty minute drive. Too far if you’ve got someone bleeding in your backseat. I don’t go there unless I need their assistance.”

Hajime misses the flash in Oikawa’s eye as a thought occurs to her, her lips briefly curling into a small, knowing smile. “Unprecedented, huh…”

Hajime is only half-listening, fingers following the rhythm of deleting contacts. She lets out a tired exhale. “Yep…”

She falters at the next name that pops up. Kindaichi, the head nurse of a private blood donation clinic in Sendai and the only one among Hajime's friends who has experience taking care of humans, backed by decades of seeing donors come in and out the door, and therefore the one who best knows how to keep a human alive after a vampire bite.

Hajime wouldn't need to go through all the trouble of having Oikawa transferred. All she had to do was make a call. It's irresponsible, there's no doubt about it, and if Hajime were a more ethical doctor, she wouldn't even consider the thought, but with what little time she has, it's the most feasible choice on the table.

Hajime locks her phone. “I changed my mind,” she says. “You can stay for now.”

Oikawa brightens. “Really?”

“Of course, it's not going to be permanent. It’ll depend on how fast you regain your memory and whether I bring in any more patients. Once the latter happens, I’ll have you transferred immediately.”

Oikawa isn't at all discouraged by this. “Thank you.” She bows shallowly, and when she lifts her head, her lips have curved gently into a smirk. “It appears that sensei doesn’t want to get rid of me after all.”

Hajime scoffs, not unkindly. “I’m merely putting it off, Oikawa-san. And it’s hardly ‘getting rid’ of you if it’s in the interest of making sure you’re well taken care of.”

“Of course, sensei,” Oikawa says, a bit placatingly. “I can’t express to you just how grateful I am for your help.”

Hajime smiles and waves her off. “It’s fine, really.” Pocketing her phone, she gets up, giving the clipboard one last look before she turns and heads for the exam room. “You know, since you’ll be staying here longer, you can just call me Iwaizumi. I’m not used to being called sensei so much inside my own home.”

Hajime washes her hands in the sink. Behind her, Oikawa practices the way those syllables roll off of her tongue, her voice just quiet enough to be inaudible to anyone but herself. She smiles, a small, secret thing.

Hajime returns to draw her blood and Oikawa presses her lips into a line, schooling her expression. She takes to looking at the far wall as Hajime folds up her left sleeve and ties a tourniquet around her upper arm.

The needle pierces Oikawa’s skin and the scent of her blood cuts straight through the air between them. Hajime’s breath hitches, every muscle freezing in place. That’s odd. She peeks at Oikawa through her lashes. Surely she has been found out, they are far too close for Oikawa to not have noticed her reaction.

But Oikawa’s eyes aren’t on her. Instead, she is staring at one corner of the ceiling, posture relaxed and easy, patient as she waits for her blood to fill up the syringe.

Hajime counts her small wins. As she sticks a ball of cotton over the puncture site and slowly draws the needle out, she makes a note to grab a drink later. Apparently she’s a little hungrier than she thought.

–

It’s a grueling three months.

Hajime is caught between two worlds. After calling up Kindaichi and asking for advice, she barely has enough time to teach Oikawa how to use a wheelchair before she is pulled back into the frenzy of the ER. It throws a wrench into their progress, taking Hajime away for the entire night and forcing her to wrap up Oikawa’s tests and physical therapy sessions by 2 PM. It helps that Hajime doesn’t need sleep — by the time she comes home, she only has three hours of rest before she has to get up again and make Oikawa breakfast.

Other than the chair, Hajime lends her more clothes, the ones that hang loosely on herself but fit perfectly on Oikawa’s broad frame. Oversized shirts, indoor slippers, loose cotton shorts, thick sweaters, and pajama pants that fit just right on Oikawa’s long legs. Once she’s free to go after her sessions, Oikawa often lounges in the kitchen, her chair parked at the dining table with one of Hajime’s novels in her lap. On the table beside her would be the phone Hajime had given her in case of emergencies, a cup of sencha, and Hajime’s old radio, piano notes softly thrumming from its speaker.

In addition to their daily physical therapy sessions, they also hold weekly psych evaluations every Saturday, per Kindaichi’s suggestion. “It should help jog her memory,” she said. “At the very least, it’d be an outlet for her emotions.”

Hajime is not perfect at it, and getting Oikawa to say how she feels about her improvement is a process akin to ripping out her own teeth. Throughout every session, Oikawa is resolutely polite, her answers either a concise ‘I’m okay’ or ‘it’s alright’, never actually saying how she feels unless it’s to say ‘no’ when Hajime asks if she remembers anything.

It’s nothing Hajime didn’t already expect. Still, it’s annoying.

It gets worse the further along Oikawa’s recovery they get. Hajime eases her into standing on her own, then into walking with crutches, and it only takes her less than three weeks before she successfully clears the hallway of the first floor. Hajime knows this is all because Oikawa practices late into the night while she's at work, if the scratches along the floor are any indication, but there is little she can actually do to get her to stop. Confronting her during the day only results in a blank stare and a quick change in the topic of their conversation, not an ounce of shame in her eternally deadpan expression.

Oikawa won’t talk but Hajime knows she’s frustrated. Stubborn, clearly. Maybe even angry at herself for how slowly she is improving, at her body for how uncooperative it is. Why else would she risk worsening her condition if it meant she had a shot at accelerating her recovery? Hajime warns her as much, emphasizing how necessary rest is for someone like her.

“I get plenty of rest, Iwaizumi-san,” she replies. “You really shouldn’t worry.”

“You’re here because I’m worried about you.” She can’t hide her irritation, stopping just short of actually raising her voice at her. She can’t help it, frayed at the edges after burning the candle at both ends. It doesn’t help that she hasn’t been drinking enough to sustain her these days.

She takes a deep breath. “At the very least carry the phone with you while you do it? And call— No. Text me when you go to bed. So I know you’re alright.”

“Sure. Whatever you say, Iwaizumi-san.”

The only upside to all of this, the only reason Hajime hasn’t made that final push and sent her off to the hospital like she said she would, is the fact that Oikawa takes her request to heart. Every evening, at 11:30 on the dot, Hajime would receive a message, a simple ‘im in bed. good night, iwaizumi-san.’ A call would have been ideal, but Hajime isn’t keen on starting another one-sided lecture to get Oikawa to invest in the effort. She’ll take what she can get.

Another good thing (though Hajime will never admit it to her face) is that she’s actually showing some improvement. Her travel down the hall is faster and smoother, taking fewer and fewer breaks with each week that passes. She transitions to only using crutches, her wheelchair folded away in a corner of the clinic.

The rate of her improvement is also fairly impressive, at least according to Kindaichi when Hajime consults with her, but she still avoids praising Oikawa too much. She’s smug enough as it is, throwing Hajime a wry smile every time she clears the hallway faster than the last time they’ve tried it, an expression made worse with how flippant she is with Hajime’s concerns. Hajime does not need to encourage such a reaction any more than necessary.

Regardless, Oikawa isn’t any trouble aside from this stubborn determination of hers. Hajime wouldn’t care so much about all of this if Oikawa was a fledgling like her other patients, if she wasn’t a fragile little human throwing herself towards the exercise over and over again and pushing her body to its limits until the action becomes natural again, until—

“I want to start climbing the stairs,” Oikawa says on their eighth psych evaluation, well into the third month since her incident.

Hajime drops her pen and pinches the bridge of her nose. It was bound to come up.

“You’ve seen my improvement, Iwaizumi-san,” Oikawa continues when Hajime says nothing. “I believe it’s time—”

“Stairs are always difficult, no matter how much you’ve improved in walking on level ground.” Hajime sighs. She’s fighting a losing battle. “But I suppose we can try it out. Let’s start this Monday. We’ll take it slow, alright, Oikawa-san? I know you’re eager to get new scenery, but let’s play it safe.”

Oikawa smiles, nodding. “Of course, Iwaizumi-san.”

—

The stairs are made of dark polished hardwood and lead straight into the living room on the second floor. Composed of a total of fourteen steps, the first seven point east and rise perpendicular to the hallway, while the second half point west, the two halves connected by a small split level landing.

As promised, they begin trying it out on Monday. Oikawa’s grip on Hajime’s arm is bruising as she ascends the first three steps with her, her legs trembling as she takes them one at a time. On the third step, Hajime has her turn around and descend. Oikawa follows, clearing the task easily, the pout on her lips the only sign that she is a little upset Hajime didn’t let her try more.

They repeat the process, up and down and up again, until Oikawa's face is covered in a thin layer of sweat, droplets sliding down the side of her neck.

“That should be enough for now, yeah?” Hajime says, bringing Oikawa’s chair to her. “We can keep trying next time. Now, what do you want for lunch?”

—

A week later, Oikawa finally reaches the landing on her own.

Now that she has proven herself able to navigate the first floor on her own, she has become less tolerant of Hajime’s help. She insists on bathing by herself, cooking her own dinner, and. on more than one occasion, has stopped just short of snapping at Hajime after she offered to lend a hand.

Oikawa’s frustration is not only evident in the furrow of her brow and the twist of her lips. She's more vocal about it, complaining under her breath or when she thinks Hajime can't hear, yet stubbornly keeping her complaints to herself no matter how much Hajime encourages her to speak her mind. It wears on Hajime as well, the air between them tense everytime she steps in to help Oikawa.

Nevertheless, it fuels Oikawa to work hard. Another week later and she finally steps foot on the second floor. She’s trembling, sweating so hard there are drops of them on the floor. Hajime helps her sit on one of the living room armchairs, having her rest and catch her breath while she runs downstairs to fetch her wheelchair.

“I don’t frequent this part of the house,” Hajime explains during Oikawa’s cool-down stretches, catching the curious gaze she sweeps over the large shelves of DVDs framing the widescreen TV. “But when you can reliably move on your own, I can clean this place up. Then you can finally keep yourself entertained outside of that busted radio I loaned you.”

They tour the second floor while they’re up there, and it’s then that Hajime entertains the idea of cleaning out the guest room for Oikawa for when she can finally stay upstairs more regularly. At four months, Oikawa is already the patient with the longest stay, and her memory has not budged one bit. She’s going to need a room of her own if she’s going to stay even longer.

Hajime disregards the idea with a shake of her head. Right now, Oikawa's recovery is more important. The rest will come later.

“That's all there is up here. Are you ready to head back down?”

—

With a whole new floor of the house now open to her, Oikawa changes.

To say she mellowed out would be incorrect. She is as stubborn and as dedicated to her nightly exercise as ever, her ability to climb the stairs improving vastly over the next months, until getting up to the second floor no longer leaves her shaking and nearly crumpling to the floor. She starts spending more time upstairs. She’d bring her books with her, flying through the novels now that she has easy access to Hajime’s library. At noon, Hajime would bring her her lunch, then go and get ready for work, taking the empty dishes down with her on her way out.

Now that they're halfway through spring, the air outside grows less biting, though it's still chilly enough for Oikawa to station herself out on the balcony with a book and a thermos of tea. She is less tense now that she’s this far into recovery. She likes staying on her feet, maneuvering her crutches with ease up and down the stairs. As soon as she wakes up, she’s already heading to the living room and turning the TV on, half-listening to the news as she has her blood drawn and as she eats breakfast. She has settled well into being Hajime's housemate, knowing how she prefers to eat her eggs, which green tea she wants Hajime to get for her, and which of Hajime’s hoodies she likes best.

Hajime cleans up the living room like she said she would, plugging the TV on for the first time in a year. Oikawa turns it on whenever she’s upstairs, the volume low on the local news channel, the perfect background noise for when she’s reading. Hajime catches her browsing the DVDs often, but she never puts one on.

Seeing her upstairs takes a lot of getting used to, same as the feeling of walking into her in the hallway or seeing her be more active around the house. Hajime often forgets that Oikawa can get around by herself now, and is reminded the hard way when she walks into the second-floor bathroom one day to take a shower, only realizing she’s not alone when she sees a face staring back at her in the mirror.

Similar incidents follow. She is so used to moving between rooms without having to look at where she was going, which now translates into a lot of walking straight into Oikawa in the hallways. Hajime would only notice her at the very last second, and it frightens her every time. Oikawa moves so quietly, crutches notwithstanding, and a chill would run down Hajime's spine at every glimpse of the unfamiliar figure in the corner of her vision.

Hajime is quick to get over her shock, however, never failing to shoot her an apology or to at least offer her a shy smile. She adjusts, learns to be more aware of her surroundings, to knock on doors before opening them and to keep an ear out for where Oikawa could be in the house.

Thus, when Hajime runs into her at the foot of the stairs one day, she already knows to step aside and let Oikawa go first. Except, this time, she doesn’t move either.

Seconds pass, and Hajime lifts a brow. “Something the matter, Oika—?”

“You keep following me around. Are you stalking me, Iwa-chan?”

Her mouth immediately twists into a frown. She cannot even refute her accusation because—

“‘Iwa-chan’?”

Oikawa’s grin is near-luminous. She continues the rest of the way upstairs, giggling to herself, and leaves Hajime still reeling from hearing such an atrocious nickname.

To her disdain, it sticks, and Oikawa never fails to look delighted everytime she says it.

The irony of being given such a cutesy name does not escape Hajime, nor does the fact that this is the most expressive Oikawa has been during her entire stay, laughing and giggling at every chance she gets. All because she finds joy in teasing her.

It’s a refreshing change, if Hajime is being perfectly honest. It’s only natural for Oikawa to become more comfortable with her the more time they spend together, hand in hand with the fact that Hajime actually looks forward to being in the same room as her now.

It’s for this reason alone that Hajime doesn’t insist she address her properly. It has nothing to do with the way Hajime is drawn to her whenever she enters a room and Oikawa is already inside, nor the way her eyes search for the items out of place in her typically tidy house, like a slipper under the sofa, the curtains left open, and water rings on the coffee table. Oikawa’s crutches fallen over on the floor beside the couch. The dishes washed, drying off on the kitchen sink rack. Hajime’s hoodies getting loose around the shoulders.

The image of Oikawa smiling. The sound of her laughter.

And Hajime—

Hajime does not stare.

Oikawa has always been handsome, even when she was half-dead, frozen, and bleeding out on Hajime’s operating table. Ignoring this was easier before her cheeks filled out and the color returned to her skin. Before Oikawa started wearing her clothes. Before she ate her food and complimented her on her cooking. Before she read all of Hajime’s favorite books and talked to her all about them. Before she began to speak to her as if they were close friends, equals. Before being in the same room as her began feeling less of a chore and more of a highlight of Hajime’s day.

But Hajime knows better than to get attached to a patient. Burying all of these thoughts — unprofessional, inappropriate — comes easy to her.

—

Hajime comes home on the evening of her day off after being out all afternoon running errands in town, bags of groceries light around her wrists, arms full with the stack of books she picked up from the bookstore. She kicks her shoes off one by one, putting the books down on the floor so she could take off her jacket and hang it up on one of the hooks on the wall.

“I’m home,” she calls out, removing her face mask. It's only then that she is hit with the full scent of sauteed onions and garlic in the air. She looks in the direction of the kitchen. “Oikawa?”

“I’m here! Welcome home, Iwa-chan!”

Hajime sighs, leaving the books on the genkan floor and walking towards the sound of her voice. In the kitchen, Oikawa stands by the stove, her back to Hajime, her hands busy frying aromatics in a small wok. Her crutch leans against the counter to her left, a safe distance away from a bowl with small cuts of beef marinating in a thick sauce, a wooden chopping board with piles of broccoli flowers and carrots cut into bite-sized pieces and shiitake mushrooms sliced into thin strips, a knife leaning off to its side.

Oikawa shoots Hajime a smile over her shoulder before going right back to her cooking. “I wanted to surprise you with dinner, but you came home earlier than expected.”

Hajime glances at the two bags she has in her hands, the contents just enough for the one person in this house who can eat normal food. She pulls out one of the chairs by the dining table and begins sorting through what she bought. “I didn’t get a lot. The traffic on the drive home wasn’t that bad either.”

She starts putting things away, sneaking glances at her as she moves between the fridge and the pantry cabinets, frowning at the way Oikawa stood. “How long have you been on your feet? Do you need to sit down? I can help—”

“I’m good, Iwa-chan,” she says, amused, not even looking behind her as she adds the broccoli and carrots to the hot butter. “Why don’t you go take a shower and rest a bit? I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

Hajime finishes folding up and putting away the empty plastic bags. “Alright. But if you need help, you know where I am.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Hajime lingers by the doorway, looking around the room for anything out of place. Maybe something to put away, dishes to wash, or a tremble to Oikawa’s legs that will allow her to step in. But there truly is nothing for her to do here. Reluctantly, she leaves.

She’s got one foot on the stairs when she spots something at the corner of her eye, down the other end of the hall, towards the clinic. Propped up against the wall outside the bathroom is a damp mop and an empty bucket, both objects smelling faintly of floral floor cleaner. Hajime approaches it, curious, and sniffs the air.

She hadn’t noticed it underneath the savory scents coming from the kitchen. It's only now when she has gone out of her way to pick it out of the air that she smells that same too-sweet floral perfume all over the entire floor.

The door to the bathroom is ajar. The first-floor bathroom is the bigger of the two in the house, holding a washing machine, a dryer, and a cabinet of cleaning tools in addition to the typical amenities. Hajime sits the empty bucket upside down over the tub and props the mop upright beside it to let them dry off completely. Despite Hajime not doing laundry for the last three days, the spin dryer is plugged in with a full load of clothes inside, the last cycle having finished long enough for the machine to go cold again.

Hajime bites the inside of her cheek. In the drum are a collection of sweatpants and oversized tees Oikawa has been wearing on rotation, and some of Hajime’s scrubs for work.

She takes the stairs three steps at a time. The contents of her room are minimal, merely a bed, a nightstand, and a large walk-in closet, the curtains perpetually drawn over the windows. The space is tidy — Hajime usually prefers resting in her office over taking the extra effort to get up the stairs — clean and free of the dust that would normally settle in rooms left unused for too long. Nothing is out of place. Her sheets, the contents of her nightstand, not even the clothes inside her closet.

Nothing except the small laundry basket standing beside the doorway, empty.

As calmly as she can, Hajime goes to check the knob of her office downstairs. It catches — locked, as she’d left it that morning. She gives a sigh of relief, and returns to the kitchen.

“Did you do anything while I was out?” Hajime asks. “I… I saw the mop out in the hallway.”

Oikawa nods. She does not even startle at the sound of Hajime’s voice, calmly taking the vegetables off the heat and into an empty dish. “I did some laundry. Swept and mopped a bit. I couldn’t bring the mop and bucket upstairs, but I tried to clean up as much as I could down here.”

Leaning against the entryway, Hajime crosses her arms. “Did you go inside my office?”

Oikawa laughs. “It's locked, remember?”

Hajime laughs along with her. “Right, right, yeah…”

She keeps talking, returning the wok on the stovetop. “If you’re wondering, no, I didn’t push myself too hard, and yes, I took breaks. Carrying the mop around one-handed was a bit of a workout, I’ll have to admit. So was bringing the laundry downstairs. I had to bring the basket down one step at a time just so I wouldn’t lose my grip and end up tossing everything down the stairs.” She grabs her crutch and slides it under her armpit, letting it support her body as she pours the beef and marinade into her now empty wok. “I worked really hard to do my share of the housework and I didn’t get in an accident once! That deserves some praise, don’t you think?”

Hajime scoffs, masking the relief she felt at those words, the anxiety from earlier melting away the more she listens to Oikawa speak. So she hadn't seen anything.

“I never said you had to do housework at all. You’re my patient, not my roommate. And not getting hurt… that’s hardly worth any praise, especially if it’s you that we’re talking about.”

Oikawa's entire body droops, and Hajime fights back a laugh. She springs right up, stomping her foot. “Still!” She returns to her spot by the stove, keeping her crutch close as she gently tosses the meat. “Some doctor you are, not acknowledging your patients’ hard work.”

Rolling her eyes, Hajime moves to lean against the counter near Oikawa better see her face, careful not to hit any of the ingredients behind her as she does. “I’m just concerned for your safety. And I’ve already said it before, but you shouldn’t be moving around so much. I get that you’re more able now, but—”

“There’s not a lot of activities I can do sitting down, Iwa-chan. And it’s been getting quite boring being all by myself now that I’ve read through all your novels.”

“No, you haven’t—”

“I’m not touching your medical journals either so don’t try—”

“I got new books just now! And my DVDs are right there!” Hajime laughs. “They’re literally right in front of you, everyday, and you haven’t watched any of them!”

“Have you seen your collection? It’s huge! I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“What do you mean, you don’t— Don’t you have any favorite movies?”

Oikawa shrugs, turning down the heat on the stovetop. “I’m just not a fan of them, I suppose.”

“That’s…” Hajime frowns, taking a moment to digest Oikawa’s words and struggling to make sense of them. “I’ve… You are the first person to have ever said that to me.” She pushes off of the counter, taking three steps towards the doorway before swiftly turning back around and jabbing a finger at Oikawa’s direction. “Stay right there.”

Hajime leaves, stomping up the stairs, and returns three minutes later with five DVDs in her hands, all Godzilla films that she holds out for Oikawa to see even when the woman firmly keeps her eyes on her cooking.

“I recommend you watch these first,” Hajime says. “You don’t need to know a lot about the franchise going in, and these are quite entertaining if it’s your first time watching any of the films. I prefer the Toho productions, personally, but the American films aren't too bad either. Because it’ll be your first time watching…” Hajime finally looks up from the cases and immediately spots the small, amused smile on Oikawa’s face. “Oi, I’m serious. They’re good films if you actually sit down and give ‘em a chance.”

“No, no, I don’t doubt that,” Oikawa says, chuckling. “I just didn’t expect Iwa-chan to be such a nerd about these things.”

Face hot, Hajime drops the cases on the counter to fix her with a glare. “I am not being a nerd. I’m just trying to help you.”

“Don’t you think that’s also the reason why I do these chores that you’re too busy for? It can’t hurt if I make things at home a little easier for you. We’re kind of like housemates now, you know.”

“You’re my patient, Oikawa-san,” she firmly repeats. She does not dwell long on the last part of Oikawa’s statement, nor does she take the bait and restart the argument on housework. She gathers the cases into a neat stack. “If you won’t take the DVDs, I can show you the new books I picked up.”

Oikawa’s heavy exaggerated sigh stops her in her tracks, and Hajime rolls her eyes.

Oikawa returns the cooked vegetables onto the wok, gently folding them in among the meat and thickened sauce. “Perhaps I can be convinced on these films of yours. Which one of these is your favorite? I can put it on later while we eat.” Her gaze flickers to Hajime. “You’re free to join me, if you want.”

Hajime cards through the cases, undecided for a full minute between Godzilla 1954 and Shin Godzilla, eventually picking the former and sliding it towards her. “This one.”

Oikawa muffles a giggle as she accepts the DVD, checking the title before skimming the synopsis on the back. “Iwa-chan is very cute, no?” She says, giving her a sideways glance. Hajime says nothing, lips pulled into a line, and Oikawa returns the case to the counter and reaches for the mushrooms, the final ingredient. “You’re clearly passionate about these films, so it’s quite sweet of you to go through all this trouble for little old me.”

Hajime huffs. “Anything to finally get you to stay still for once.”

“That, or you’re just that excited to eat, and you were just waiting to jump at the opportunity to distract me so you can get a bite of my cooking.”

Hajime freezes. She glances at the stew. Some four hundred years ago, there was a version of her that could stomach something like it. It had taken her twenty years to get over the nausea, another ten to swallow a bite down, and a final five to learn how to cook again. She hasn't had an issue hiding her appetite since, and she has successfully concealed it even while sharing a home with a human for the last six months. Being too busy, hiding away in areas Oikawa couldn’t yet enter, or ‘eating’ while she was out so she wouldn’t have to at home.

Now that Oikawa can cook on her own, it only makes sense that she'd include Hajime in meal prep and invite her to eat with her. She'll take to cooking the way she will to cleaning the house and doing laundry, filling in the spots Hajime couldn't with her limited time, feeding her two to three meals of human food for every additional day she spends here, all while Oikawa sits there and watches her swallow every bite.

How many meals will it take until Hajime breaks and gets sick?

Her luck is running out. The only solution is to nip it in the bud.

Hajime looks away, coughing into a fist to clear her throat. “I’m still quite full,” she says, relying on the comfort of an overused excuse. “I had a big lunch while I was out, so I’m thinking of skipping dinner tonight.”

Oikawa’s brows furrow, and her lips press into a thin line. “Ah…” She frowns down at her cooking, all too much for one person.

Hajime winces. “Sorry. I should’ve said something earlier.”

“No, no. It’s fine. I’ll just…” She forces a smile. Going to the sink, she takes a bowl from the drying rack and holds it out for Hajime to see. “I’ll put your half aside for now. Once it cools down, I’ll pop it in the fridge, then you can just heat it up when you’re hungry again.”

Hajime stands back as Oikawa cuts off the flame and divides the stew between two bowls, leaving one on the dining table loosely covered by a thin plate. “I’m sorry,” Hajime says as she watches Oikawa scoop rice onto a third bowl. “My appetite's usually quite small, so next time just cook for yourself, okay? It'd be a shame for your cooking to go to waste…”

“It’s so odd to see you looking so sorry for yourself.” Oikawa shakes her head, and when she looks back at Hajime the curve of her mouth is easier, genuine. “It’s really fine, Iwa-chan. It’s not like there's anything we can do about it.” She walks to the fridge. “I'll finish up over here. Why don't you go and get your movie set up so we can watch it over dinner?”

Hajime breathes in shakily, and nods. “Right. Sure.” She turns on her heels, reaching up to open a cupboard and pulling out a wooden tray for Oikawa's food. “I can bring your food upstairs for you?”

Oikawa chuckles. “How sweet. I would appreciate that very much, thank you.”

She waits for Oikawa to place the bowl of rice on the tray, along with a bottle of iced tea from the fridge and a spoon and a pair of chopsticks wrapped in a cloth napkin, before she awkwardly slides her DVDs on there as well. She picks up the tray and leaves before Oikawa can say another word.

—

Hajime braces for the suspicion, for the questions and curious looks, but nothing comes up from it. Not when they watch the movie that night nor the next day when Hajime reheats her half of the stew and serves it for Oikawa’s breakfast. She keeps the keys to her office close to her, double-checks the lock whenever she leaves for work, and tries not to look too uncomfortable when she comes home and finds that Oikawa has cleaned around the house again.

Summer descends upon them. Oikawa starts each day by opening all the windows and doors to keep air flowing in. She trades her crutch for a cane, one that she mostly uses when she’s been on her feet for too long or when going up or down the stairs. She stands even taller now, and though their height difference isn’t anything significant, it’s still enough that Hajime has to tilt her head up a little to look Oikawa in the eye. Her presence alone takes up the entire room, her footsteps loud enough to telegraph her location in the house even when Hajime holes herself up in her office. Her laughter echoes between the concrete walls, muffled through wooden floorboards, her voice clear and near-piercing when she seeks Hajime out to talk about the new sci-fi film she has just watched. She learns about emoticons and kaomojis, learns how to sprinkle them in the texts she sends while Hajime’s at work, and bombards her phone with updates like ‘eating dinner (๑ᵔ⤙ᵔ๑)’ at seven, ‘E.T is a masterpiece Iwa-chan have you watched it before (⁠｡⁠♡⁠‿⁠♡⁠｡⁠) lets watch it together tomorrow please??? ( •̯́ ^ •̯̀)’ at nine, then ‘going to bed now!!! "( – ⌓ – ) ᶻ 𝘇 𐰁 honk shoo honk shoo’ at twelve.

The sweaters, hoodies, and pajama sets are folded and stored away, replaced by thin shirts, tank tops, and loose shorts. Music filters in through the house’s hallways and open doors, in tune with the cicadas' calls, and with the second floor getting so hot during the day, Oikawa moves back downstairs, reading her novels by the fan in the kitchen, a bottle of iced tea sweating on the table in front of her. The nights are spent back in the living room, a new movie on TV. Always a different genre: a rom-com one Tuesday, then a found footage horror film on Sunday, never any of Hajime’s Collector’s Edition Godzilla DVDs unless the doctor is in and free to watch them with her.

Hajime is too busy to clean out the guest room, continuously refusing to let Oikawa do it for her either, and nearly offers her the bed in her own room instead just to shut her up. For now, Oikawa sleeps in the living room with two large pillows and a thin blanket borrowed from Hajime. It isn’t long until the sofa cushions become familiar with her weight, so infused with her scent that it shrouds Hajime anytime she sits down to watch a movie with her.

The bed in the clinic lies empty, its thin mattress folded in half and covered with a plastic sheet to prevent it from gathering dust.

“Don’t sit there.” Hajime doesn’t need to look behind her to pinpoint Oikawa’s position in the room, taking a seat on the bare metal and plastic bedframe. “There’s a perfectly good seat waiting for you over here, Oikawa.”

A hundred or so tests later, and it's clear by now that the only things still keeping Oikawa in this house are her legs and her memory, the former almost completely recovered at this point. Hajime has gradually cut down on the tests until all she’s running are weekly blood tests and check-ups on Oikawa’s knees and ankles, done at dawn on the same days when she holds their psych evaluations.

Oikawa ignores her. “I can’t believe I used to sleep on this thing.” The loud creak of the bed perfectly tunes Hajime out. “I’m sure Iwa-chan’s very happy I’ve outgrown this bed, hm?”

Hajime rolls her eyes, tapping her pencil against her clipboard. “Oikawa-san. We’re almost done with this week’s psych eval.”

All she receives for a reply is another loud creak. Hajime hangs her head with a sigh, eyes running over the clean lines of her evaluation notes. Hajime has been diligently writing them for every session regardless of how little change there actually is to track, and while Oikawa’s mood has considerably improved over the past six months, Hajime doesn't really need a formal evaluation to know that.

In contrast, 7 months into their arrangement and the contents of the awareness check have not budged beyond a name and her age.

Hajime taps the eraser end of her pencil onto the blank space. “Oikawa—”

The hair on her arms stand up. A chill runs down her spine. The air behind her shifts.

For a precious thirty seconds, it is completely silent in the room, no other sound uttered by the two people within. Hajime stops breathing.

Oikawa is standing right behind her. Close enough that she can feel the warmth radiating from her skin and smell the sweat on her shirt, her breaths blowing against the hair on Hajime's crown.

Movement at the corner of her vision, to her left. Oikawa’s face is mere inches from hers. She is looking over Hajime’s shoulder to read her writing. She looks up the moment Hajime turns to face her. She smiles, and the sharp edges of her face smooth out.

Harmless. Just a patient.

“You must like me a lot if you’ve been keeping me here for this long.”

The feeling clawing at Hajime’s chest dissipates, forgotten as soon as it’s gone. She huffs, shakes her head. “Are you gonna sit down yet?”

“What’s the purpose of asking me these questions when you already know my answer? Name: Oikawa Tooru. Age: 35. No, I don’t remember anything else other than that. No work, no family, no place of residence, no contact numbers.” Hajime dutifully writes everything down, amused. Oikawa straightens her back, stretching her arms above her head with a low groan. “Are we done here, Iwa-chan? Can we watch Godzilla vs. Destoroyah already?”

“No, we’re not done yet.”

“...We aren’t?”

Hajime points to the chair in front of her. “Sit.”

Oikawa pouts but nonetheless obeys, walking around Hajime and finally sitting down, primly keeping her hands on her thighs, fingers loose around the handle of her cane. “Sounds pretty serious. You actually kicking me out?”

Hajime lifts a brow. “You know I can’t do that in good faith while your memory continues to show no improvement.” Another sigh. “I wanted to ask you something and I need you to seriously consider it. You’ve been here for over 7 months, you’ve regained your strength and your mobility, but other than the gap in your memory, there’s really no reason for you to stay here anymore. I feel… a little bad knowing you've been stuck with me for so long. I'm sure you're sick of this place.

“All that to say, you can move out if you want. If you want to go and live somewhere else, I can have someone I trust take you in and let you stay until you recover completely.” She sets her pencil down. “What do you think?”

Oikawa doesn’t even blink. “I want to stay here,” she says. “This place is quite nice and cozy, and Iwa-chan is so pretty. If you kick me out, where else will I find someone as kind and cute as you?”

Hajime bites the inside of her cheek. “Are you sure that's what you want?”

Oikawa’s smile turns sly. “If you want me out of your house, you can just say so, Iwa-chan.”

“I don't, it’s just—” Hajime looks down at her clipboard. “You aren’t tired of being stuck in one place?”

Oikawa tilts her head, as curious as it is teasing. “Should I be? I’m living quite comfortably, aren't I? Isn’t that more than enough for plenty of people?”

“Well, what about your memories? Your past life? Surely there are people who miss you, even if you can’t remember them. Don’t you want to go back?”

She shrugs. “Not really. I don’t spend hours out of my day missing a life I can’t remember. And if you ask me—" She spreads her legs and leans forward, slouching to rest her elbows on her thighs— “Unless you truly want me out of your house, or you’ve got a good enough reason to send me somewhere else, I don’t think I would ever want to leave. I love it here. I love living in the same house as you, and I love getting to spend all of this time with you, too.”

Oikawa huffs a laugh. “Is this the part where you tell me you’re finally shipping me off to a public hospital?”

Hajime frowns. “That window closed ages ago, and you know that.” She snaps her clipboard closed, tucking the pencil into her breast pocket. She stands up. “Your memories… You can stay here as long as you haven’t regained them.”

“Or if you get another patient,” Oikawa adds, grinning.

Hajime clears her throat. “…Right.”

Oikawa laughs, louder this time. “Of course. Why else would you let me stay for this long, right?”

—

Why, indeed?

It’s dark in the living room, illuminated only by the shifting light from the movie playing on TV, the grand fight between monsters going ignored by its audience. There’s a warm body snuggled up to Hajime, a heavy head on her shoulder, snores softly blowing against her neck, the thin blanket wrapped around their legs making them feel even hotter in the summer evening.

Hajime can’t find it in herself to feel in any way bothered by all of this, her eyes glued to Oikawa’s sleeping face.

Her hair had gotten longer. Just last week, Oikawa asked her to trim it short again, around the same length as to when Hajime first saw her, the soft ends of her brown hair snipped away until they could curl around her jaw again, shorter around her face and a few centimeters longer at the back of her neck. Now it’s short enough to poke her in the eye or get tangled in her eyelashes.

A couple of strands are covering her face now. Without thinking, Hajime reaches up to gently push them away, tucking them behind her ear.

Why stay? Oikawa hadn’t made any sense that morning, but what’s Hajime’s excuse, letting her stay for even longer? Every day that they spend together is merely allowing Oikawa more opportunities to learn the truth. The smart decision, other than to actually kick her out, would be to come clean to her and tell her the truth, and not wait for another fledgling to pop up on the drive home.

But is it a good idea, exposing Oikawa to the reality of their world? Putting her life at risk just to let her stay for a little longer, to keep up the fantasy of a mundane life with this complete stranger, to keep her trust intact for just a couple weeks more? What would Hajime do if she told Oikawa, if she stayed and saw the fledglings herself, if she got hurt? If she lost that precious trust? Would Hajime be able to live with herself? Would all of this secrecy be worth it in the moment Oikawa decided that she didn’t want to live with a monster after all?

Hajime shakes these thoughts out of her head. She relaxes into Oikawa’s weight.

At the end of the day, Hajime is just her doctor, and Oikawa her patient.

It’s a risk to tell her the truth. Oikawa will be scared, and she will want to leave, and until she can take care of herself, there will be no point in telling her.

And Hajime can have this, can’t she? This modicum of comfort, of companionship. Some semblance of a friendship between two women? The past seven months haven’t been easy, but even she can admit how nice it is to have someone waiting for you at home, someone to take care of even if they're a complete stranger.

Even if that last part isn’t completely true anymore, hasn’t been for a while now.

Hajime closes her eyes and leans a little more into the warm body beside her, the soft thrum of Oikawa’s heartbeat echoing in her ear as she falls asleep.

—

Predictably, Hajime gets sloppy.

She is two hours into her night shift by the time she feels the first tremble in her fingers, three hours in when she knicks her tongue on a fang, and four hours in when she bends the doorknob out of shape as she’s entering the break room. It’s only then that she remembers she hasn’t fed in a month.

It is by no means the first time she has forgotten to feed, and so she manages to not break during the remaining hours of her shift. Despite this, hunger catches up to her fast — the two surgeries she assists in drain her completely, up until she’s dragging her feet to her car and blinking away sleep on the drive home. She gets there in one piece, though her hands still shake as she opens her front door from reining in her strength, careful to stop herself snapping her keys clean in half.

The first floor is blanketed in near-complete darkness, lit only by the porch lights outside and the dim glow reflecting from upstairs. Hajime stops and takes a second to breathe the moment she steps inside, her hands curled into fists as her chest shudders through each inhale and exhale. She knows what could happen when she isn’t careful, not yet in the clear even inside the four walls of her home. Her office is less than 20 steps away, and her minifridge of blood stock, tucked away under her computer desk, is just another 5 steps from the door.

And above her head—

Someone is asleep in the room directly above her. A human, healthy, the beat of her heart echoing through the floorboards and drumming lowly into Hajime's ears. The walls and floors are soaked with her scent, telegraphing the rooms where she has spent the most time in. Hajime tracks the scent and pins down her exact location.

It would take Hajime less than 30 steps to reach her.

She takes one last deep breath before opening her eyes.

She walks to her office and unlocks the door. She throws open the fridge and her eyes immediately lock in on a tray of Oikawa’s blood samples, collected and tested that morning. Hajime didn't have the time to dispose of them correctly before she had to leave for work. Another deep breath and she pulls her gaze away, to the rack below it.

There are four bags of blood in the fridge and she drains every single one of them in one go. Retrieving more from the storage room takes little work. Hajime is careful not to spill even a single drop, rinsing the bags under the bathroom sink, gulping down the water tinted pink, before gathering all of the plastic and throwing them in the proper waste bin.

Hajime licks her teeth clean, sighing as she traces the length of her fangs with the tip of her tongue. They’re long enough to poke against her lips, peeking out even with her mouth closed. Her eyes are still solid black, and no amount of rapid blinking can speed up their change back to their usual color. She flexes and clenches her hands, feels the way her muscles move under her skin, and glances at her fingertips. Her nails have thankfully retained their usual shape except for where her right index and middle fingernails got chipped from breaking that doorknob.

It’ll be a while before things go back to normal.

She walks out of her office and locks the door behind her, each step down the hall and up the stairs weighted with exhaustion, the blood in her system warming her up underneath the layers of her clothes, getting her all set to curl up in her bed for even just an hour of rest.

She blinks in and out of sleep. She yawns.

The next time she opens her eyes, she is standing in front of the couch, right above her housemate’s sleeping form.

Oikawa is lying on her back. She is wearing a thin oversized shirt and loose shorts, her blanket pulled over her legs as one arm loosely hangs off the side of the couch, a large pillow having fallen to the floor. It’s warm in the early morning, sweat beading on her temples. Her lips are parted, and her chest rises and falls as soft snores cut through the silence, the muted TV still playing a CGI-heavy superhero movie and casting soft shadows across her face.

For a long moment, Hajime does nothing but stare. The moment feels almost out of a dream, time seemingly slowing down to a standstill as all movement in the room condenses into a hypnotic, syrupy loop, the shifting blue light making the room appear to be submerged underwater. She is captivated by the rhythm of Oikawa’s breathing, the heat from her body calling for her touch, a heartbeat waiting to be heard, to be forced to stutter and stop.

Hajime blinks. The mirage shifts. Oikawa’s head has moved ever so slightly higher up the arm of the couch, her throat bobbing as she swallows then relaxes.

Hajime eyes the movement of her neck. Oikawa’s snoring resumes.

Hajime’s knees hit the floor with a soft thud, a cold palm planted on Oikawa’s shoulder and another on the pillow under her head, jaw unlatched over her throat, and fangs growing in length, ready to pierce the uninterrupted bump of the heartbeat beneath her fingertips.

Breathe in, breathe out.

She caresses the pulsepoint with her thumb, her breathing slowing to match Oikawa’s. Like this, it’s easy to wrap her hand around her throat. To hold it all in one hand, to simply let her feel the weight of her palm, the callouses on her fingers.

At this moment, in this dream, nothing could stop her from giving into her impulses, squeezing her neck and breaking it with just a fraction of her strength.

Breathe in, breathe out.

She tries it. Once. Lightly. A test. She squeezes down the sides of her throat, immediately matching the stutter in the woman’s breathing, eyes drawn once again to her mouth. She peels her hand off to trace the shape of her lips, her touch feather-light.

Closer, closer. Saliva drips down the corner of her mouth and disappears into the human’s hair. Another drop cuts a line across her throat.

Breathe in—

All the blood in her system cannot hold a candle to this. This human, this scent. Everything tastes like ash in the face of this absolute feast waiting in front of her. Everything outside of this moment is forgotten, irrelevant now to the predator. All 8 bags of blood breaking down in her stomach. All 8 months of waiting, living with a human and letting her desecrate her territory with her scent. All pretense, gone. At this moment, no longer a doctor and her patient, concepts far too complicated for animals like them. Now it's just a predator and her waiting, vulnerable prey.

Now it's just her and Oikawa.

.

.

.

Oikawa?

Hajime rips her head away. Her fangs retract, she snaps her mouth closed and claps a hand over it. The beat of her own undead heart rings in her ears, out of tune with her ragged breathing. She stares at the drying lines of her spit on Oikawa’s throat, at the space where her hand had been, at the mark of her thumb where she pressed it in a little too hard. It’s there no matter how long she looks at it, no matter how many times she blinks. It’s all real.

She can’t stand it. She looks away—

—and straight into Oikawa’s eyes, open and unclouded by sleep, staring right back at her.

Hajime stops breathing. She all but jumps away, palm burning where it had touched the heat of Oikawa’s skin, falling on her ass as she scrambles away until her back hits the coffee table. Through a wince, she keeps her eyes open, not looking away despite all of her instincts screaming at her to flee.

And like a nightmare she has long forgotten, Oikawa smiles.

“Something wrong, doc?”

Before Hajime can reply, she picks up the pillow on the floor and cuddles it to her chest. Hajime follows the complete arc of her arm, its slow movement, snapping out of her trance when Oikawa rests her hand under her cheek, the perfect image of comfort and sleepiness.

She grits her teeth and nearly slips in her rush to get up.

“You—” Hajime clears her throat— “You know?”

“Know what?” Oikawa giggles, turning until she has her back on her. “Go eat something if you’re hungry. It’s not good to go to bed on an empty stomach, you know?”

The blood in Hajime’s belly churns, her mouth goes dry. She can feel herself getting sick.

Oikawa has begun snoring again by the time Hajime gets downstairs, her shoulder throbbing with pain where it hit the banister in her rush to get away. Her hands tremble as she unlocks her office, slamming the door shut as soon as she's inside, shallow breaths halting in her chest as she listens for any movement upstairs. Her mind runs with thoughts about the possibility of being followed, what she’d do if Oikawa knocked on her door, what Oikawa would do to her now that she had nowhere else to run to.

The silence persists. She forces herself to breathe.

Hajime is alone in her office, dizzy from fright, heart hammering in her chest as she fights to catch her breath. No-one is coming after her.

Finally alone, she can't stop thinking about Oikawa in that frozen moment upstairs. That indifference, her smile neither mocking nor genuine, not a shred of fear in her voice. The exact same person Hajime has grown to know, still a complete stranger.

Hajime must have slipped up, somehow. It’s the only logical explanation as to why Oikawa hadn’t been afraid. But where? When? Hajime prided herself of her control, but can she still claim such pride after tonight? Was it the last time Hajime turned down a bite of Oikawa’s food? Was it the first and last time Oikawa had cooked for her? Did she see Hajime feed, or smell the stench of blood on her breath? Or was it earlier, before the movies and the dinners and the sleeping in her living room and the walking up the stairs? Earlier than that, with the days spent in Hajime's clinic and the daily checkups, did Oikawa catch her then? Did she see the way Hajime’s pupils dilated whenever she drew her blood? Did she feel the chill of Hajime’s skin that night in the middle of winter, and knew then and there what monster was bringing her back from the brink of death?

Or perhaps, Oikawa had already known who she was even before they met? Perhaps she had been looking for her, and knew exactly what to do to get Hajime to bring her into her home.

A cold sweat runs down her back.

Hajime needs to get away from her, put as much space between herself and Oikawa as quickly as possible. She needs to get rid of her, to throw her into someone else’s arms and run, to lock her away and forget. She needs—

A woman with no memory, no point of origin. Only a name and an age.

She needs to know who she is.

Hajime cuts all thought and boots up her computer.

She is too restless to sit down, the light from her monitor blinding in the dark office. She starts simple and checks the news, looking for any mention of a woman who'd gone missing in the middle of winter.

Hajime spends so much time scanning articles and trying out different iterations of Oikawa's name, but looking for any news on her disappearance leads to nothing but dead ends. No missing person reports. No tears wasted on a call for Oikawa to come home. No CCTV footage of her before the date of the incident. No search operations, no ‘have you seen this woman?’, no ‘last seen or heard in this location’.

Her next move is to call old friends. To Hanamaki: “Did you hear about an attack on this night?” To Tendou: “Were you and your group behind this?” To Kuroo: “Do you have any info on her?” And, reluctantly, to Kita: “Is she one of yours, and did you send her to my location?”

All negative.

Her absence runs deeper the more Hajime looks. She is never in any of the Oikawa family pictures. No educational institution knows who she is. Her name has never once been uttered in any government record. No dental records, nary a file of her getting a test or having an operation in any hospital in the country. No record of her birth or marriage or death.

Hajime checks every version and every update, suspicions melting away to further confusion as it becomes clear that this isn’t in any way a coverup. In all of the websites, in every article and record she has read in the past 3 hours, no data was erased. Nothing was removed, empty save for a faint impression that something was once there. Rather, nothing has ever been written.

The empty space has always been blank. A woman by the name of ‘Oikawa Tooru’ has never existed.

She is no-one.

Hajime has nothing on her but her body sleeping upstairs and a folder filled with 8 months’ worth of tests and half-answered psych evaluation notes. Everything she knows about her is as fickle as her own memory, as unreliable as every truth Oikawa has ever uttered. Hajime has come this far, spent all of this time getting to know her, and still she is left with nothing but uncertainty.

Hajime drops herself on her chair, legs weak, slouching against the backrest. She covers her face with her hands and takes a long, deep breath. Her eyes are dry from looking at the screen for so long without break. Outside, the sky has gotten lighter, the morning almost upon them.

Hajime groans and drops her hands, her head hanging back, eyes wrenched shut.

What now? She figured she could come up with a plan by sunrise, but she has nothing, no clue how to proceed. Does she open the door and cook breakfast for the lion sleeping upstairs? Pretend nothing happened, that it really was all a dream? Hajime doubts she could manage something of that sort, but what else is there to do? She learned absolutely nothing.

The only things she actually learned about Oikawa, the only information about her that Hajime could really trust, were the test results. The hard and true science of the human body. There has never been anything unusual to them, consistent as soon as she recovered, nothing that could indicate even a shred of inhumanity. Oikawa is human; a ghost in the way it seems no-one but Hajime knows about her, but a human nonetheless. One that bleeds and feels pain, and one that can heal and come back from near-death.

The body can never lie.

Hajime lifts her head. The minifridge is at her feet.

She gets up and shuts down her computer, immediately dropping to the floor and cracking the door open. Right where she left it is the small tray of Oikawa’s blood samples, the fridge light rendering the tube caps fluorescent. Among them, she picks out the tube with a green cap.

She swirls the little fluid that remains inside it. The solutions in the tubes mean that none of the samples will be one-to-one in taste and texture as blood fresh from the source. The green-capped tube includes heparin, a chemical equivalent to the natural anticoagulant found in the human body. This is as close as she can get to tasting the real thing.

She uncaps the tube and brings it to her nose. It… smells like blood, the iron coming through savory on her senses. Hajime's mouth waters at the first whiff, her teeth digging into her bottom lip to stop her from just downing the blood sample like a shot. Instead, she plugs the open end with the pad of her index finger and flips the tube over to let the blood stain her skin. She rights it and removes her finger, careful not to spill the rest all over her floor.

She takes a second to stare at the dark red bead.

Am I really doing this?

Before she can change her mind, she puts her finger in her mouth.

Her vision goes dark. The drop of blood melts onto her tongue, tastebuds alight as it mixes into her saliva. She can feel it as it is broken down, burning her cold flesh as it slides down her throat. It is unlike anything she has ever had, better than everything she has ever had, intoxicatingly sweet even with just one drop. It brings back the desire that had taken over her earlier, the one that had drawn her to Oikawa's sleeping body, to want more regardless of how full she is. A reckless hunger she has only ever seen in fledglings, an unabashed desire for more, a feeling she hasn’t felt in centuries. Anything to have a taste of this.

It takes her every bit of her strength to stop herself from finishing the rest of the blood sample. She caps the tube back up and all but throws it into the fridge, resting her forehead on the closed door.

Hajime sits there, breathing in and out heavily. She licks her lips until they're dry enough to split, eyes shut, mulling over everything she has learned.

For so long, Hajime has relied on the reliability of her tests, ignoring the nagging thought that things weren't as they seemed. Something was wrong, something has always been wrong and she has been blind to it, putting too much faith in the conventions of her practice to see the reality that had been right in front of her the entire time.

She never had the whole picture. Even when she was so sure of the truth, it still evaded her, continues to evade her now as she tries to make sense of everything.

Oikawa wasn't a human who'd been attacked by a vampire. She was never human in the first place. Whatever she was, what creature in between and beyond human and vampire, she did a damn good job at pretending to be normal, enough to fool every single one of Hajime’s tests. Oikawa has been lying to her from the moment they met. She figured out Hajime's secret, said nothing, and instead continued to ride off of her hospitality for months on end. Using her, leeching off of her.

A monster neither human nor vampire, her blood the one thing that can pierce through Hajime’s perfect control. She was a fool for ever bringing her here.

Hajime takes a deep breath, lifts her head away from the fridge, and opens her eyes. The sun has risen, casting its first gentle rays into her office and forming a halo along the wall around the doorway.

This house isn't safe, not while she's here, and Hajime can't risk staying another second in her presence. She needs to get rid of her, the anomaly that she is. It's the only way that this nightmare can end, so things can go back to the way they were before Hajime had ever met her.

She stands, feet steady on the ground.

It's the only way.

—

It's another peaceful morning in the Iwaizumi household.

Soft piano music plays on the radio, the notes intercut by the tinkling of ceramic bowls and the soft clatter of wooden chopsticks being sponged down with soapy water.

Oikawa hums along to the song. She woke up, alone, on the couch of Hajime's living room, the TV idled on the DVD menu of the movie she put on last night. She'd forgotten to wash the empty dishes from last night’s dinner, which unfortunately caught the attention of a colony of ants, their trail cutting the living room in half. After brushing her teeth, she brought everything downstairs and began working on a breakfast for one.

It's not often that she is allowed to cook breakfast for herself. Despite proving herself able, Hajime has always insisted on being in charge, still stuck in the old routine she made when Oikawa first started living here.

For today, she kept it simple, merely prepared some miso soup, got a pack of natto out of the fridge, and cracked a raw egg on top of a bowl of steaming hot rice. It was perfect. She'd share some with Hajime if she could.

Speaking of the doctor, she wasn't in her room when Oikawa checked earlier. She wasn’t in the clinic either, though her car was still parked outside. The only place Oikawa couldn't check was Hajime's office, although she couldn’t hear anything from beyond the locked door, not even when she pressed her ear to the wood and held her breath.

Oikawa knew she was hiding but felt no urge to force their confrontation. Hajime will come to her when she is ready.

Oikawa is in the process of putting the dishes away when she hears a door open down the hall, soft footsteps approaching. She smiles, not bothering to turn around when she greets Hajime a good morning.

"Are you finally joining me for breakfast, Iwa-chan?"

No reply. Oikawa frowns, puts away the last of the bowls and flips the overhead cabinet shut. She turns around. "I've got rice and some soup leftover. Would you like to eat—"

Cold, wet stainless steel kisses her throat. Instinct makes her step back to avoid it. It follows until she has nowhere to go, her lower back pressed against the edge of the counter. Her eyes blow wide when she realizes how close Hajime is, the woman's lips pulled back in a sneer, the knife and the weight of her body trapping Oikawa where she stands.

Oikawa blinks. The shock melts away. "Good morning to you, too.”

Hajime glares at her. “What are you,” she asks through gritted teeth.

Oikawa’s mouth falls open and she scoffs. “Are you seriously asking me that? We've known each other for so long and you still don't know who I am?”

“Answer the fucking question!”

Oikawa merely looks back at her, bemused, a crooked grin on her lips. No harm in playing along. “O…kay,” she says melodically. “I am Oikawa Tooru, 35.”

Hajime's teeth shine. “Liar.”

Oikawa scoffs again, every last bit of amusement quickly sapped out of her at the sound of that one word, truly offended now. Brows furrowed in sincere confusion, she sighs and leans her head back as far as it can go. The knife follows. She acts like it’s not even there. “You're acting very strange, Iwa-chan. Who else would I be?”

“You can't stay here if you won't tell me the truth of who and what you are.”

“I didn’t lie. I am Oikawa Tooru. Who else would I be?” She pushes back against the blade, jutting her chin down and forcing herself to look Hajime in the eye. “Why? Have you found any evidence telling you otherwise?”

Hajime spots clarity in Oikawa's eyes. They both know she hasn't.

A blink and it's gone. Oikawa glances up at the ceiling, a heavy sigh leaving her as she slouches, both palms planted on the counter. “I really don't get where this is coming from. What does lying to you about my identity have to do with anything?”

Hajime grits her teeth at that, every muscle in her body drawn tight like a bowstring, the tension zoned in on a single point of contact between their bodies, into the knife on Oikawa's throat. “You… Don't act like you don't know, you bastard.”

Oikawa’s head lolls to the side, eyes squinted, and when she looks back at Hajime that insufferable grin has returned. “Don’t tell me… Is this about last night?” She laughs in disbelief. “I really don't mind that you're a vampire, you know. I honestly thought it was so cute when I found out. Hell, I don’t think I'd mind if you decided to feed on me. You’d just have to ask nicely.”

Hajime narrows her eyes. A slight turn of her wrist, and she slides the knife up until the edge rests right under Oikawa's jawbone, forcing her to snap her mouth shut, the new angle giving her a good view of the top of Hajime's head.

“I'm not playing around,” Hajime spits. “Whether you tell me the truth or not, it doesn't change the fact that you have no place here. I demand that you go back to where you came from. Otherwise, I…” Hajime trails off. There's blood in the air.

She looks away from the piercing brown of Oikawa's eyes, inhaling sharply when she spots the small cut on her neck, blood just beginning to pool around the edge of the blade. She forces herself to look away.

Oikawa shivers. Hajime sees it run up her spine, feels it under her hands, hears it in the stutter of her breathing, and nearly tastes it on her tongue when it pushes Oikawa's neck further into her knife.

“No,” Oikawa says after a minute, unsteady, “I don't think I will be leaving anytime soon. You already know how much I like it better here, especially because I get to live with a cutie like you.” She caps it off with a wobbly smirk.

Lips twisting into a snarl, Hajime only glares back. She does not blink, does not pull away — she could wait forever if she had to. Seconds tick by. A minute, and she sees first-hand the slow fall of Oikawa's smile, the discomfort in her eyes as they shift between Hajime's face and the far wall behind her, the way she bites the inside of her cheek.

Oikawa lets out a slow breath. She frowns, eyes closed. “I really don't know anything. I can only remember things as far back as the night we first met. Everything I know about myself, my name and how old I am, I just know them to be true. I don't know how I know, I just do. That is as close as I can get to telling you the truth.”

She opens her eyes and looks straight at Hajime. “If you still don't trust me, if you still think I'm a danger to you, you can just kill me. I'm sure you’re well-acquainted with the methods. You can make a meal out of it too, if you want. Doubt you'll even break a sweat from how easy it'll be.” She relaxes against the knife, stretching her neck until the blade smears her blood across her skin. She does not wince.

“No-one is looking for me. You will be the only one to remember that I even existed.”

Hajime tilts her head. Unwittingly, she glances down at Oikawa's throat.

Killing Oikawa would be the most efficient way to get rid of her. There will be no need to prep for it when she’s already got her pinned in place like this, and she already has all the tools at her disposal to make sure she disappears entirely, cleanup always a breeze for nobodies like Oikawa. She who owns nothing. The clothes she had been wearing the night Hajime found her were burned to ashes in her backyard, and now all that she has — from the clothes on her back to the food that sits in her stomach, every book and DVD she has ever read and watched, every object she has ever used in this house — everything is borrowed. All Hajime's. It'd be easy to wipe the record clean of her.

But what of the house itself? Its walls, the floors, the rooms, every chair she has ever sat on, every inch of paint on the staircase's wooden banister that her nails have scratched off. Every page that has been kissed by the oil of her hands. The threads that have been worn through and stretched in all of the clothes she has ever worn. The traces of her blood on Hajime’s teeth, the ones that still cling to the interior of her car. The deep earthy notes of her scent that have permeated into the very foundations of Hajime's house. How long will it take until Hajime can once again live in a world that does not remember a woman named Oikawa Tooru?

Hajime still has so many questions, but if Oikawa is to be trusted, then the answers lie elsewhere. All that she can build upon are her assumptions, but what little she has all point to one undeniable truth: there are many things unknown about Oikawa, yet such uncertainty tells Hajime that no matter what she does, she will never be rid of Oikawa for the rest of her life. She will come back; no matter how many times Hajime will try and get rid of her, by kicking her out or by slitting her throat and draining her empty, she will come back.

So long as she wants to be with Hajime, she will return, and she will stay.

Hajime grits her teeth and shakes her head. “I'm not a killer. And I’m not interested in your blood, thanks.”

She steps back, lets the knife fall and hang by her side. Oikawa lifts a hand to the cut on her neck, otherwise still frozen, pinned down by Hajime's gaze.

“But, I can't let you leave just so you could find someone else to use, either.”

Despite all her instincts yelling at her to turn back and change her mind, this is her only real choice. Oikawa can't trick her into killing her, nor can she trick her into bringing someone else into this. Hajime was the one who brought her into her home and back from the brink of death. She is Hajime's burden, and Hajime's burden alone.

Jaw clenched, Hajime hesitates for a breath longer. She hasn’t said anything yet and she is already regretting her decision.

“You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying here, in this house, with me. It's the only way I can keep an eye on you.”

For a moment, Oikawa says nothing, merely staring at her, dazed, her mouth falling open in shock. Her usual mask forgotten, she looks truly vulnerable in a way Hajime has never seen before. Not physically weak, like she was when Hajime first met her. Not peaceful, like she is when she’s asleep. Vulnerable. Unguarded. Real. The truest she has ever been in Hajime's presence.

A crack forms. The corner of her mouth lifts, and she suddenly bursts out laughing, loud and harsh in Hajime's eardrums. Hajime grips the knife tight, biting her lip to tamp down her grimace.

“That's it? All of that, just to let me stay? And for such a noble cause, too. How selfless!” Oikawa lowers her hand. It comes away dry. Her fingers aren’t stained with blood, and she doesn't even look at it when she wipes it off on her pants. She slips both hands into her pockets. “Feels a little wrong, not gonna lie.”

She smiles, head tilted back, relaxed now that there isn't a knife to her throat. “Are you sure there's no other reason why you won't let me go?”

Hajime stubbornly keeps her eyes trained on her face.

Oikawa doesn't wait for her to reply. With a final chuckle, she pushes off the counter and puts away the last of the clean dishes. Her humming resumes. Hajime watches her the entire time.

She shuts the cupboard and turns the radio off. “The offer’s there if you want it. I'm gonna go take a shower.” Oikawa walks past her and out the kitchen. She does not look back.

Hajime listens to the sound of her footsteps and waits until they taper off at the top of the stairs before finally letting go of the tension keeping her body upright. She gasps for air, unsteady on her feet, her knees threatening to buckle at any moment. Her hands tremble, holding on to the knife for dear life as she takes three steps forward to grab the marble counter.

What's done is done. She has given Oikawa her consent to stay, and regardless of the reasoning behind that decision, the fact remains that Hajime knew she couldn't be trusted, her vague nature alone enough to mark her as a threat, that she was so close to finally kicking Oikawa out of her life, had given her the chance to leave and never return, only for Hajime to take the offer back like a coward.

It doesn't feel right to keep her here, to stay this close to her knowing how dangerous she is. It makes her sick knowing she’ll just have to keep living with Oikawa despite all this uncertainty hanging over them, the illusion of normalcy broken. How long will she live like this, keeping up appearances as she shares a home with a person she can't trust, the one person who can cut through Hajime's self-control?

And how selfless is it, really, keeping her here? Other than Hajime, who is Oikawa a danger to? In fact, what has she done — actually, purposefully done — that would warrant such suspicion? Was keeping her here truly the only conclusion?

Hajime is getting dizzy thinking in circles.

All for nothing. She has gone through all of this, for nothing. Saved her, tasted her blood, and threatened her, for nothing. How pathetic. A vampire who’s too scared to use her fangs. A doctor afraid of the patient she nursed back to life. Whatever it is Oikawa wants to do with her, Hajime may as well lie back and take it like the docile thing that she truly is.

All she has done was keep Oikawa all to herself. That small, selfish, hungry part of her couldn’t bear to be alone in this house again and convinced itself that Oikawa needed to stay, that it is the best outcome, the only one where Hajime didn’t need to suffer, where no blood had to be shed. As if last night didn't happen. As if it won't happen again.

Like locking a dog in the same room as a huge slab of poisoned meat and trusting that it won't devour it.

Hajime groans and tosses the knife into the sink. She runs the tap, washing the blade until lemon scented dishwashing soap is all she can smell. Rinsed and left to dry on the rack beside the sink, she finally lets it go, the joints in her fingers cracking from how tightly she'd been holding it.

Hajime takes a bottle of water from the fridge, cracks it open, and downs it all in one go. The cold water is soothing on her parched throat, easing the tension in her body with every gulp she swallows down. She tosses the empty bottle in the recycling and lets out a slow, steadying breath, standing in the silence of the kitchen and listening to nothing but the rhythm of her breathing. Gradually, the frenzied beat of her heart slows.

She hears the shower upstairs turn on. It takes her every bit of her strength to not flinch at the sound.

The countdown to the end of her rope has begun, and Hajime doesn't know if she can resist her for much longer.