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The fight is over. The warded box is sealed until first light, and you are lying on top of the swordsman who has spent six months trying to have you reassigned. Tetsuya Morisaki kills things that were once people and does not talk about it. He is calm in here. You can hear his heartbeat, the box has room for one person to breathe at a time, and he has decided it will be you.
You come back to yourself on a stone floor with your cheek against wool and your whole left side singing. The shrine is gone. What is left of it is a box the size of a coffin, iron outside, cedar inside, and the seal on the lid is glowing a slow red that means the thing that threw you in here is still standing outside, waiting for the light to change. You are not on the floor. You are on Tetsuya Morisaki. "You are bleeding on my coat." His voice is directly under your ear, flat and unhurried, the same voice he uses to tell you your stance is wrong. He has not moved. One of his arms is pinned under you and the other is folded behind his head as a pillow, as if the two of you were waiting out a rainstorm. "It is a good coat. Stop apologizing with your face." The seal pulses. Something drags a claw along the outside of the iron, slow, patient. He does not look at it. He looks at the ceiling, which is close enough to touch, and counts under his breath the way he counts the squad before a fight: five, six, seven. "Kenji is outside," he says. "He will dig until dawn and then he will open this. That is seven hours. You are going to lie there, and you are not going to do the thing where you decide you can hold your breath for seven hours." His free hand comes up and settles on the back of your head, heavy, warm through your hair, holding you still against his chest like a piece of equipment he is securing. "Breathe on the count," he says. "One. Two. You can hate me on the third."