The boy visibly cringed. "But that's just it, sir."

"What's it?"

"We don't know whose eyes to rip out. We don't know where to march. Divisions six, eight, and thirteen were just advised to arm themselves as preparation for a code blue which according to the Military Manual on page 4 lines twenty-eight to thirty, signifies..."

He rolled his eyes before sparing the boy a good lung cramp. "Preparation for oncoming invasion." Kenren lifted a slim brow and crossed his arms. "And what drunken idiot told you to do that?"

"Why...Tenpou Gensui did. You didn't know, sir?"

*****

"You bastard." It was just a voice. Devoid of anger, fear, sympathy, or anything. It was just a voice that floated over his head coming from the open doorway where the lights flooded into the dark, empty save for the two of them room. His eyes were closed and he breathed deeply, half in a world of dreams, half in an unlikely reality where a certain stubborn general was cursing him from ten feet away.

And so at this moment, two things were existing at once.

The door closed and there was darkness again. Footsteps got louder to his right where the door was. And a haze materialized that made the left side of his room- the side with the window- waver as if he were trying to see through a curtain of rain. Hakkai tried to focus his eyes as a figure was fluttering there like the dying flames of a setting sun.

He squinted and before long he was looking into a pair of deep amethyst eyes, deeply disapproving and deeply relieved.. "Found you, idiot."

"Sanzo!" The name sounded strange to him as if it had been an eternity since he'd said it. He wanted to get up and reach for him, but his body was drugged with sleep. He was dreaming this. Or at least half dreaming it since Kenren was still there, oblivious. And so Hakkai looked with a tinge of longing and envy towards the monk who sat by the window as if both of them were still back in the hotel. "How did you..."

The blonde shrugged. "There were only three places where you could have been: Earth, Heaven, or Hell." he looked out the window, boredom gracing his face as ever. He went as if to reach for a cigarette then refrained. "You pamper the monkey too much to go to Hell, not that I find this place to be much of a better alternative." Hakkai wondered if he could actually see his surroundings.

"Tenpou." Kenren whispered only a little harshly, reaching out his hand in order to wake up the sleeping marshal, only to have second thoughts and pulling back.

Sanzo didn't see him.

"Hakkai, get your ass back here." the monk grumbled, but despite the language, he sounded sincerely concerned. He knew. For a long time he knew. Maybe he was even aware of the exact, the exact moment when it happened because sometime in the middle of the night when they had shared that room, the entire air above them was suddenly washed over with the scent of cherry blossoms before dying out less then a breath later. "I don't like him."

Point: "You don't like anybody."

Counterpoint: "I dislike you less."

"There's nothing much that I can do right now about it. You should at least realize that."

"I realize it."

"Then why are you here, hm? You didn't have to call my attention in order to locate me. Where's the trust?" Hakkai smiled because he knew he was forcing from the monk an answer the man was too proud to vocalize. A sense of satisfaction- knowing that no gun could be pointed at his head. No threat for Sanzo to hide behind. Exploitation of vulnerabilities was not Hakkai's style at all, but then again, where was Hakkai?

"Reminding you to come back." Stone still features glowed eerily beneath the moonlight, the pond below casting reflections up into his window which pierced right through the monk as if he were air. Sanzo's features blurred. His concentration was breaking. "Because you're an idiot and might forget to."

"You want me to come back?" The thought amused him. Are you afraid that I've abandoned you? Afraid enough that you'd starve yourself fasting, torture yourself by abstaining from your precious cigarettes, and then jumping headlong into a reckless...dangerous...meditation... just to say...

"You're coming back."

"When I can. There are a few loose ends I must tie up before I leave."

"You're not on a fucking business trip, Hakkai. You have one day. Just one day and then I'm taking you back." He didn't say how, but knowing Sanzo, there was always a way that made things more convenient, at least for him.

The blonde turned away from him, hiding what Hakkai could only assume was a pout. But even with that last ultimatum, he still didn't leave, lingering drearily out of many nights' habit. Not saying anything at first, then nodding to himself. "This is you." A quiet silence. A Hakkai silence. He still lingered.