Declan had the right of it. Aoba gave a startled little jolt when ‘called’, perhaps not on the verge of a total freak-out, but definitely sitting there with a wideness to his eyes as he struggled to comprehend what he was being told. That injector of his looked so out of place among all the artifacts and souvenirs Declan had brought home for him, he thought in distraction. But he had to admit, there was definitely a weird little gap between sitting on the couch and—finding himself standing, freshly dosed by Declan’s aid.

A separate entity. An alternate personality. Aoba had been taking his medicine ever since the wilder years of him being a teenager, or something like that, but…an alternate personality?? Had Granny really been aware of that, or had she only been treating the headaches as they were? But then again, if there was some weird side effect to it like that, it would explain why normal painkillers had never worked for him….

Why wouldn’t she have told him?

“Different? Different how?”