Lucien's POV
When I came back down from the rooftop, I heard their voices echoing through the hallway.
Not raised. Not tense. Just... careful. The kind of tone you use when you're telling a story you haven't told in a very long time.
I didn't interrupt.
Just leaned against the wall outside the door and listened.
Araragi's voice was quiet but steady. "So... what happened to you? I mean, your limbs. Your body."
Kiss-shot was calm. Clinical.
"I was ambushed. Three of them. Each came for a piece of me."
"Three?"
"Dramaturgy," she said. "A vampire himself, more muscle than mind. He tore off my right leg. Episode, a half-immortal with a cursed cross embedded in his chest—he took the other."
She paused.
"The last was Guillotine Cutter. A human. Fanatic. Quiet. He took both my arms."
I could almost hear Araragi's eyes widen.
"How... did they beat you?"
"I was careless," she said.
A lie, or maybe just a half-truth. Her voice stayed even, but I could tell something about the question bothered her. Like she didn't quite believe the answer herself—but had no other explanation.
"You let your guard down?" he asked.
"Not exactly. It felt like... I was weaker than I should have been. But I didn't have time to understand why."
Not yet. That would come later.
Araragi didn't press.
I stepped inside before the silence stretched too far.
Kiss-shot didn't look at me, but she spoke anyway.
"Were you eavesdropping?"
"Only a little."
Araragi raised an eyebrow. "Do you always do that?"
"Only when it matters."
He gave me a look. Not hostile. Just... uncertain.
I didn't blame him.
From his point of view, I was still a shadow in the corner of someone else's narrative.
And part of me still felt like one.
"So now what?" he asked her. "You... get your limbs back?"
"That's the idea," she said. "Once I recover what was taken, I'll return to my full power."
"And then I can go back to being human."
She looked at him.
Not coldly.
Not warmly.
Just flat.
"You think it's that simple?"
He frowned. "Isn't it?"
"You died for me," she said. "That isn't something you undo with a handshake and a blood transfusion."
"But there is a way, right?"
"Possibly. But it would hurt."
"How much?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"Enough that you might not want it by the time you get there."
That shut him up.
He didn't argue. Didn't beg. Just leaned back and let the weight of it settle on his chest.
He was brave, I'd give him that.
Brave in that Araragi kind of way—always willing to bleed as long as it helped someone else.
I stayed silent.
There was nothing to add.
Only things to notice.
Like how she watched him—not fondly, but intently. Like a craftsman watching a blade cool after pulling it from the fire.
And then her eyes flicked to me.
Only for a second.
But it was enough to remind me that I hadn't been forgotten.
That night, I paced the halls again.
My fingers brushed the wall.
And again—just briefly—I felt it.
That sensation.
That impossibility.
Like the air wasn't all the way real. Like the world was a page I could slip between if I just breathed the wrong way