Cho Hakkai's eyes pass through the beads of water on a grimy window, and he thinks about weakness.
He doesn't think about knives in the dark, because it's a noisy, smoky inn tonight, and he doesn't think his heart's ghost would appreciate the atmosphere.
He doesn't think about Sanzo, either, because as far as he's concerned (unless it's Sanzo asking) there's nothing to think about. It's better that way. It's too hard, walking on a flat stretch of quarry and realizing it's nothing more than a thin crust of ice. Better to hold a hook to throw in case it crumbles you fall, and believe in the granite.
He doesn't think about Goku, either, because Goku, while not his sun, is certainly someone's, and even the snow a star flinches from has no chance--a snowball's chance--of destroying it.
He's thinking, idly, about the set of his jaw, and how much sharper he's seen it hone itself in the mirror recently, and when his appetite will come back. He's musing over how strange it is that what children can never get away with; letting the dog clean their plates; should be so absurdly easy for a grown man, that what his palm would have been skinned for once he can now do openly. This is not, he thinks, one of the traditional privileges of adulthood.
He's been trying different recipes and ordering new dishes, but all he can force down is the rice beside a dish, broth and noodles, inoffensive things without odor. No one's noticed yet, as far as he can tell, so he orders for Goku's palette and eats what he can.
It may be for the best--he's almost certain he saw the silhouette of a car against the moon one night, and it isn't as though he's been starving himself; there's no reason to suspect himself of hallucinating. Maybe it's a growth spurt. Of some kind.
There have been more women, recently, and a growing presence of cold blue eyes between his shoulders.
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