Archive of Our Own ^beta

The town at the foot of the volcano is a quiet one, characterized by bent trees and empty houses —

— so says the writer, on his fifth attempt, when he switches out the word ‘empty’ for ‘spotless.’ It is by the third hour when Kiyoomi decides none of his sentences work for an opening paragraph, even though it shouldn't be so hard, writing about ghost towns. The said ghost town lives on, in its own way; while the birds fly south and never come back, and a volcano lays dormant, the houses keep their shingles and two stragglers stay for the summer. He turns the page. On the second floor balcony of a rented house, Kiyoomi begins again, just to make sure he’ll end up with something for the day.

In the distance, an older house collapses under its own weight. Kiyoomi watches, then takes his eyes off for a second; the house, destroyed, stands new again, when he returns his gaze.

“Ah,” he says to himself. He writes, more of a field note than anything else: there is a god in this town, and he's keeping it standing.

Kiyoomi’s assistant, Motoya, comes upstairs with dinner on a tray: rice, lean meat, and two helpings of umeboshi. They both know that Kiyoomi writing the whole day will turn into Kiyoomi writing the whole night, because that's what he does when he's on assignment: write, then write, then write, until he's finished and they're ready to move onto the next town. Motoya leans over the balcony with him for a moment, glancing over at the new page.

“This one’s stumping you, huh?” he asks.

Kiyoomi would much rather call it a work-in-progress. He takes a morsel of rice, and then a bit of a plum, considering that his answer.

“Weren't we just in another town like this a month ago? I figured it’d be similar to write.”

“No,” Kiyoomi says. “This one’s different.”

“You can always tell, huh? What, do your moles act up like you're Harry Potter?”

“Rude.” Kiyoomi turns. “And his was a scar.”

Motoya laughs and bounds off the balcony ledge. Before going back inside, he takes one more at the sky, and the outline of a volcano in the distance. Night comes, faster than they ever expect it, dusk a memory made not minutes ago.

“What do you think will happen?” Motoya asks, in a quiet that already sounds ceremonial. “Once you're done and we head onto the next place?”

“Must something always happen?”

“It does every time you write about a place. It sounds morbid, but now I just come to expect it.”

Kiyoomi takes another bite, swallows with effort. In truth, he is never very hungry when he’s writing. He thinks of how to write the resurrected house, before losing the outline of it in the darkness.

“Well, regardless of what happens,” says Motoya, “I know you'll do the place justice.”

Again, comes the rumble in the distance, a crash. Kiyoomi looks out, god-ready, and finds nothing but a clear sky without the streak of clouds.

It's true, what Motoya says: when Sakusa Kiyoomi writes about a place, calamity descends upon it. In one town, locusts. In another, a storm that lasts fourteen days. But sometimes they're other things, like the birth of fifty babies in one town, or stray cats, overrunning a single island. Motoya calls it divine intervention. The internet calls Kiyoomi a curse. Kiyoomi, unbothered, tells them all it's a matter of pure, unadulterated coincidence.

The day begins with the click of a camera. Motoya, the self-proclaimed assistant, chef, and photographer on this expedition, shoots a picture of the volcano, a violet peak nearly lost in blue sky.

“Did you know there are 270 named volcanoes in the country?” Motoya says, also the trip’s part-time researcher. “Fuji, Nikko, Daisetsuzan. You know the ones. But some don't have names at all. Local folklore says that this one just came out of the sea one day, dormant. It's never once erupted.”

“Do you think it will soon?” Kiyoomi asks.

“Maybe when you finish your work.”

Kiyoomi writes the word down, dormant, while Motoya takes more pictures. Unable to come to sentences that morning, he settles on mere words, descriptors like seeds that’ll grow into more later. There’s fresh, like the air, unlike city smog, and still, like how one can hear the mumbling of cicadas. Stature: how houses stand without grand heights. A good small town, he writes, is worthy of forever.

Forever. Kiyoomi pauses, crosses the word out. He knows forever is merely a series of ends, stitched together. Like villages that wash away in storms, or capitols that turn over to become new ones, Kiyoomi’s seen what becomes of shifting lands and borderlines. Still — one must give credit where credit’s due; Kiyoomi looks for the god who's graced this town, and traces his vision back towards the peak of their nameless volcano. Clouds shroud it in further secrecy, spreading to the rest of the sky, while humidity comes on like cooking soup in a sweater.

“It’s going to rain,” Kiyoomi declares, knows, like a fact.

“But forecast said it'd be clear today,” Motoya insists, as if he's also the trip’s dedicated meteorologist.

The first drop hits him on the back of the neck, as if to spite him, and orders the rest of the rain to turn to downpour. The rain listens. It drenches everything, from their shoes, and their shirts, leaving Motoya to lament about all things calamitous.

Kiyoomi slides under an awning of a house not his own, and stares on; no god on the rooftops, and no god in the trees, he waits for the rain to pass and the day he might appear.

The rain decides to run a marathon, and Kiyoomi and Motoya stay inside. Getting caught in any storm is a nightmare for Kiyoomi: the damp clothes, the wet hair, the shoes that won't dry for days on end. He spends extra time in the shower, then runs a bath at noon. As Kiyoomi soaks, head back against the tub, he smells rain. He hears it tap against a half-closed window. He settles in this, the dotted silence, and finds himself clean again.

Motoya cooks them a late lunch downstairs, a hodgepodge of things he calls the Wednesday experiments. It’s Tuesday. Kiyoomi picks at the umeboshi on the side. The local news, broadcasted from a nearby town, talks nothing of rain. “We have sun, for now,” a real meteorologist says, “but a new storm system’s rapidly moving in from the west. Sudden winds are a big factor here — the force of them’s pushing the storm onto us faster than we predicted.”

“Ha!” says Motoya, mouth still full with the rest of his meal. He pounds his chest with an open palm, more out of relief than anything else. “And here I thought we’d have another disaster on our hands here.”

“You act like it’s the apocalypse every time it rains.” Kiyoomi collects all their dishes, placing them in the sink for a proper washing; he sighs, for the lack of a dishwasher, and rolls up his own sleeves before running the water for a rinse.

“Given our track record,” Motoya says, “I wouldn't be surprised if it was. I don't think I could take another round of internet hate.” He shudders, handing Kiyoomi a pair of rubber gloves. “You know how I dream about it sometimes. It feels so real, like I've lived through it before. You write about a place, and strange things happen. And then we run, and run, and run. From one village to the next. In the dream, I think to drive, but, oh — we don't have a car like we do now. Cars don't exist yet.”

“You have a wild imagination,” says Kiyoomi. “Even so, your dream-self would be horrified, at your shit car now.”

“I think he'd find it charming.” Motoya looks over at the dishes. “And wait — you sure you don't need help, washing those?”

Kiyoomi shakes his head. “You leave food stains. I'd better do it.”

“Fair.” Motoya never fights the chance to skip dish-washing duty. He disappears into the next room to sort through the pictures he took earlier, humming an ancient song from a bunraku play.

The rain stops, shifting onto other towns like the forecast promised. Kiyoomi opens a window for cool air. He relishes in it, humidity conquered for now, and settles into the peace his favorite soap and an ever-handy sponge. He believes it, when they say cleanliness is next to godliness; he likes the way the dishes dwindle, one by one in the sink basin, until all the porcelain is gleaming and put away for another time.

Kiyoomi doesn't even notice the leak pooling at his feet, water-falling from the crack of a closed cupboard. He rolls up the legs of his sweatpants, sparing himself from another round of wet clothes, and discovers, much to his dismay, a rusted pipe, eaten through by age. He goes to shut the faucet off, just to stop the bleeding, but even the handle there breaks off; at this point, there's water everywhere, and a small disaster in the kitchen — I might as well have stayed outside when it was raining, he thinks, before taking a hand towel to a flood.

Motoya stumbles onto the scene. He turns, right back around.

“Come on now,” Kiyoomi calls after him, a sopping towel his white flag.

“One second!” Motoya lingers in the hallway, vaguely rummaging for something. “The owner left me an emergency number for this kind of stuff. I'll make a call.”

And so he does. The repairman on the other end says he'll be there shortly, which puts Motoya at ease, but Kiyoomi thinks it might be best to throw the whole house away at this point, given the water up to his ankles and the potential mildew. The possibility of mold. What does ‘shortly’ even mean? On the TV, the local news even flashes to a commercial break, taunting Kiyoomi with neon purple cleaning products. Cut down on grease and mold! Mold, mold, mold. The water rises. The doorbell rings.

“That was quick.” Motoya opens the door and welcomes their repairman inside. “You must be Ushijima-san,” he says, just loud enough for Kiyoomi to catch the name.

From the hallway, comes the echo of steps: the familiar tack of Motoya’s sweaty feet, and something else more solid, almost graceful, in new footfalls. Kiyoomi first catches him as a shadow in the reflection of the flood, some steady thing, one that doesn't ripple or break with the rush of water. Ushijima, Kiyoomi repeats, with an exhale. He stills with the name, like opening the window all over again.

Ushijima stands tall over the sink. He doesn't have a toolbox on him. He doesn't have anything on him but strong hands perched over the counter, as if those alone could solve anything. Ushijima waits a second, another, before raising a left hand; palm over the curve of a spigot, he silences it, sparing the house from further disaster.

“These old houses,” Motoya chimes in with a sigh. “For all their charm, they’ve also got minds of their own, don't they?”

“Yes, that's it,” Kiyoomi answers first, and Ushijima stares back pointedly. Motoya leaves after that, citing the sudden chill in the house’s air. He mumbles something about it being haunted — why are we always somewhere haunted — and embarks on an afternoon of picture-taking.

This leaves Kiyoomi with Ushijima: him alone, with the god of this town.

“There's no need to lie on my behalf,” Ushijima says. “He can know what I am.” He leans forward, breaking the flood’s surface with his hand; window open, Kiyoomi gets the sense that it'll evaporate in no time, and that the kitchen will once again find order.

“It’s better to let him think it's haunted for now.” Below, Kiyoomi watches the water recede, ankle-deep to sole to nothing. “He comes around, usually, but it should come slow.”

“And you? How do you know?”

Kiyoomi shrugs.

“I've traveled enough to know when there's another god in my presence.”

“So you couldn't mend this yourself?”

“I'm not the type.”

Ushijima accepts the answer with a nod. He asks nothing further, about why, or how, or when.

The flood, risen into vapor, hangs heavy in new humidity. It streams against Kiyoomi’s cheek, a migration of air, and disappears out the window altogether. He pretends the warmth goes with it, but it doesn't; it stays, on his face, like the film of a flu mask in summer.

“The pipe should be sealed over now,” Ushijima says, taking a handkerchief out from his pocket. He wipes off his palms, because even deities can sully their hands, and folds the wet side in, much to Kiyoomi’s amazement.

He remembers then, the nature of miracles: how some can come grand, like the shifting of storms, or small, like proper washcloth management.

Ushijima goes to the door, done with his work. Before departing, he keeps his hand on the wall, like his touch will keep the house alive another day. He leaves, and Kiyoomi sees after him; he leaves, and Kiyoomi watches a god content to walk instead of fly.

A straggler on the kitchen floor, the handkerchief remains. Kiyoomi thumbs the dry side. The only proper thing to do, he decides, is to return it to its rightful owner.

There is a god who lives in this town, he later writes: the left-handed kind.

In the morning, Kiyoomi searches for a shrine, though he's never liked them. Some reasons: how crowded they get on holidays, the offerings, how some gods gloat in the face of the things built in their honor. He searches between the houses, the newly-bent trees, and closed shops; no temples welcome him in town, and all it does is bring him relief.

Motoya stays behind at the house, to sleep in. He cites the usual dreams, so vivid they knock stick again his skull and make headaches like stalactites. “Sometimes, I dream we’re getting chased out of shrines,” he’s said, many times, “because you insulted their gods and called them undeserving.”

It's true, Kiyoomi’s always wanted to say. The gods and their shrines, the gods and their offerings, the gods sitting in the trees, to lazy to move, or talk, or walk on the grounds they've sworn themselves to — what need, would they have, for places of worship? Maybe Kiyoomi doesn't understand, because he will never get a shrine of his own. Transient gods get little worshippers, while gods of calamity get none at all; no one rewards you for the end, even when ends happen as much as beginnings do.

At the only market in town, the elderly owner informs Kiyoomi that there are no shrines in town.

“No one’s around for the upkeep. More and more people leave every year,” he says. “I know it doesn't look like it, because repairman’s kept it so nice, but even places run their course, you know? Everyone here can sense it.”

Going on a tangent about his own exodus, the owner says he will go to live with his children in Osaka soon. Any day now. Kiyoomi thanks him for his time, and buys a box of umeboshi and a lint roller from the shop for his trouble.

He walks a main road, as empty as can be, towards a clearing where the trees still stand upright. Past them, a lake pools pure blue, a mirror to the sky without gusts to wrinkle the surface. A nameless volcano, closer than ever, leads a chorus of trees to look at their reflections, while birds fly over and never once think to perch on nearby branches. The wind rises, a god’s to weave; Kiyoomi takes it, and sets on a course to make forests bow and branches break.

In the middle of the lake, Ushijima sits alone in a rowboat. A book stays open on his lap. He turns his head towards the fallen trees, left hand raised to bring them back. They stay fallen, and Ushijima keeps on staring; they stay down, because Kiyoomi knows of eventual ends.

Kiyoomi raises a handkerchief from his pocket, properly washed and dried since yesterday. Letting it sail through the wind, he watches in horror when it slaps Ushijima in the face, cloth clinging to his cheek like a long lost friend. He peels it off his face. He sets his sights on the shore. Nodding, Ushijima glances towards the seat in front of him, an invitation for Kiyoomi to join.

Usually, Kiyoomi wouldn't partake in any time spent with another god. But he rocks the boat when he makes it to Ushijima, rusty with the mechanics of appearing and disappearing at will; he stands, then sits, making waves by the way of wind and wobbling.

“It's you, then.” Ushijima folds up the handkerchief and settles it back in his pocket. “You're the one bending my trees.”

“I told you, didn't I? That I was a god, too?”

“Right,” says Ushijima, “but you’ll have to excuse me, when I say that many other gods have passed through here. I don't keep track anymore.”

“Even when they come bearing disaster?”

Blinking once, twice, Ushijima stares on like he doesn't understand.

“Disaster?” he asks. “Isn't this town still standing?”

Kiyoomi can't help but smile. “I see, then.”

“What do you see?”

“You've only ever had those half-assed gods come to you,” says Kiyoomi. “There can't be any great change without seeing it through the end.”

“Is this what you intend to do, then? Bring change?”

Kiyoomi answers by a cloud crawling over the sun, a temporary eclipse over the lake. He knows they need no declarations: of war, or eternal struggle — that it's the shrine-less gods who do what need to be done, without temples, or prayers, to remind them.

Ushijima peers up. He shifts the cloud over once more, sun strong again on his back. “If you'll excuse me,” he says, “I'd like to get back to reading.”

Kiyoomi looks on, at yellowed paper of an old book. With no words in sight, Ushijima traces blueprints for ancient houses, lines made slow like making muscle memory. Kiyoomi watches: someone who cares, not by expressions on a face, or words said, but the touch of a left hand, learning across the ages.

Taking out his own notebook, Kiyoomi remembers the writing he has left to do, too. He turns to a new page, its edges sharper than usual, and begins in his own way.

There is a lake, almost hidden past the bent trees, where no one bathes or even wets their feet. The wind never ripples the surface, even when the gales rip up the surrounding forest. It is a beautiful body of water, in its stillness. Like you could rest in the sight of it for a while.

Still, I wonder what rests under the mirror of it.

“I remember.”

“Do you now?” Kiyoomi asks Motoya that night, when they’re both on the balcony sharing beers. Motoya, a lightweight in all his lifetimes, will always get drunk; while Kiyoomi, given his godhood, will never.

“All those dreams I’ve been having,” Motoya says, an age-old script at this point. “They weren't dreams at all, were they? I always get drunk, too drunk, and then it comes flying back to me. You — a god, and me, your eternal assistant.”

“You're not just an assistant,” Kiyoomi corrects, if only to appease him.

“That's right.” Motoya slams down half of his beer, while Kiyoomi sips at his tentatively. “At some point, I was a great swordsman. At other times, a gardener. Hell, I think may have been a bunraku star.”

Kiyoomi nods along, though ‘bunraku star’ was more like ‘attempted bunraku star.’ In truth, they’ve had this conversation over the course of Motoya’s many lifetimes, each of them varying in levels of disbelief, horror, and amazement. Considering all things, Kiyoomi counts this particular revelation as tame; because Motoya is a happy drunk in this lifetime, and not the angry kind he was during, let’s say, the Meiji restoration.

“Do I always find you, then?” Motoya asks. “It's uncanny.”

“You're family,” Kiyoomi says.

“Family?”

“It doesn't have to be by blood.”

Motoya engulfs the rest of his beer. “I feel like all my past lives want to cry right now,” he admits. “Is that normal?”

“I don't know if it's normal,” Kiyoomi says, “but you can, if you want to.”

But Motoya doesn't. He just lays across the ground of an unswept balcony, content to breathe in the night. It's funny, what air can do: too stuffy, and find yourself in an existential crisis, mad with the season, but just cool enough, and you'll be content enough to crack open another beer. Motoya picks up a Yebisu. He cheers, to all his past lives, and the things that make his current life so sweet, like binge drinking, and prime time TV. The toast goes on: for ankle socks, and convenience stores, and record players that never scratch his albums.

“And to my favorite god,” Motoya announces last, grinning. “May we...oh, I can't think of anything to say. How does one toast to calamity?”

“You don't.” Kiyoomi wraps his hands around a barely-touched beer, letting it go flat altogether. “The end comes, whether you celebrate it or not.”

“My memories are still coming back,” Motoya says. “How have you brought it on before?”

Kiyoomi doesn't answer in a way that's easy to explain. It isn't like he’s caused the storms of their past, or the great fires, or the locust swarms. Kiyoomi merely senses the end, whispering across the land; he listens to it, guides it, and lets it speak out the way it was meant to.

Up ahead, another house falls. The trees will continue to keel, and the birds will fly south to never return. Another moving truck, done packing, rumbles down the road, while residents drive on to become residents-past.

A full moon hides just behind the peak of a volcano. The latter tells the former old secrets: of sleeping, of eruptions. Kiyoomi hears them, as he always does, and vows to open the earth when the time comes.

That night, Kiyoomi lays down on his futon, eyes open, eyes shut. He doesn't need sleep, like Motoya does, but he’ll indulge every once in a while to pass the time, like when he's run out of things to write, or read, or when he’s counted every star he can find. In dreaming, he seeks some common ground. In dreaming, he finds Ushijima, pooling sink water in the cup of his left palm.

“Are you sleeping tonight, too?” Kiyoomi asks Ushijima.

“Yes.”

In dreaming, two gods find themselves in a kitchen again, not the one downstairs, but another, far from the sight of human gaze. It looks like any other kitchen, more modest, in fact, given the old wood fixtures, the clutter of plates and pans. Mismatched chairs complete a four-person dining set, while kettles wait for use on the stove and never get their chance.

“Are you staying for lunch?” Ushijima asks, as he lifts one of the pots from the shelf.

“I have nothing else to do,” says Kiyoomi.

“Will you prepare the water, then?”

In dreams, they are not gods, but people who need to make their own broth. Kiyoomi mans the stove. He watches the water boil, as surfaces bubble over, while Ushijima chops up semi-soft tofu for miso soup.

“Usually,” Kiyoomi observes, “other gods don't let me into their dreams. I knock, and no one comes to the door. You left yours right open.”

“I don't mind.” Ushijima goes to the refrigerator, where there are blueprints of houses stuck by the way of magnets. He pulls out a stick of scallion, and a beef flank steak for stir fry. “As long as I get to eat, it doesn't matter who joins me.”

Kiyoomi returns to the boiling pot. Eating, like sleep, is not something a god needs, not in any sustaining way, but suddenly the hunger hits him, a pang over his stomach in one tidal wave. He wants to eat suddenly, the soup, the stir fry. As he waits, Kiyoomi observes: Ushijima stirring, forearm flexed with the spatula; Ushijima and the shift of his back, as he reaches for a cutting board; Ushijima, toweling hands off clean after washing. In this godless place, it occurs to Kiyoomi, that this is what a real god looks like — not some invisible thing, not some unknowable being, but the bare force of someone, daring to be.

They sit down to eat. Kiyoomi stares down at his food, and realizes his appetite isn't something that'll be solved with a meal. He has questions, ones he'd usually keep to himself, because he wouldn't want them pounced on him, either; but he reaches anyway, by the way of chopsticks on stir fry. Ushijima thinks to do the same. Kiyoomi tries not to wince, at the collision. They battle like this, one tap, two tap, before retreating from the dish altogether.

Kiyoomi sets his chopsticks aside, holding one hand in another in his lap. In dreaming, his ears burn. In dreaming, he chides himself for the contact.

“I saw your name on the rental paperwork,” Ushijima says. “Sakusa Kiyoomi.”

“Yes.”

“A mortal’s name.” Ushijima does take the first piece of stir fry this time. “I also have that.”

Usually, Kiyoomi never wants to know a thing, save for what Motoya’s cooking that given day, or when he’ll to buy refills for his favorite pen, or the next town he’ll be hitting next; but he wants to devour it suddenly, this name, as much as someone with a craving. It makes him want to talk about his own, so he does: “Mine was nothing special,” he finds himself saying. “My assistant’s family named me, a long time ago.”

“Your assistant? The one who called me for repairs?”

“I met him a long time ago, in one of his other lifetimes. The name just stuck.”

Ushijima doesn't sour, or smile, but there's a flicker, somewhere, when he blinks.

“Lifetimes,” he repeats, like he doesn't know the word. “I don't meet the same people across their different lives. They come and go, and that's it.”

“Then where did the name come from?” Kiyoomi lets himself ask. He considers all of this groundwork, instead of asking for the name directly, like earning something hard-fought. And Ushijima would even probably give it to him easily, in fact, if he did ask. But Kiyoomi knows: some things move as they’re meant to. Slow, like time within a deity’s dream. Like two gods, who decide to walk instead of fly.

“A mortal took me in once,” Ushijima says. “He named me.”

“And you've never seen them again? Across the centuries?”

Ushijima partakes in another piece of stir fry, properly chewing and swallowing before speaking again.

“No,” he says. “They haven't come back.”

“Can't you go out? To find them?”

“Why would I? Everything I have is here.”

Kiyoomi pauses for a moment, if only to catch his own breath. He's never allowed himself groundwork like this, the prying, the questions, and had someone counter him with answers.

“Your land,” he says, honesty the only right thing to offer. “It's dying. This is no place for anyone to return to.”

By now, more tempestuous gods would have chased Kiyoomi out of their shrines, or cursed him straight to every variation of hell. Ushijima makes a quiet without new weight to it. He puts down his chopsticks without the clang of someone just-insulted, his meal still unfinished.

“If that's the case,” Ushijima says, looking up, “then I will I make sure I keep it alive myself.”

Kiyoomi thinks to all the houses, falling, then rising again. The trees, rooted in barren soil. The land speaks, and it says it is ready to break, while birds fly over and see nothing but a place covered in darkness.

“One day, something will have to give,” says Kiyoomi. “The things you’ll try to raise won't stay up any longer.”

“And you'll see to this,” Ushijima says. “The end.”

Kiyoomi nods. He pretends it doesn't thrill him, Ushijima’s acknowledgment, no longer a question, but statement of fact. He resists raising a hand, to the back of a heated neck, and ignores the heat racing to his ears, filling his chest. He thinks to curse, not Ushijima, or the warmth itself, but the act of dreaming, for sensations, heightened, pulled at, reddened.

Ushijima picks up his chopsticks once more. He smiles, small but vast. This makes Kiyoomi pick up his utensils too, ready to eat again.

Kiyoomi wakes up the next morning, full from sleep. It’s a heaviness that reminds him he even has limbs, ones flayed about and still numb from dreaming. He unsticks the arm from over his eyes. Legs go untangled from his futon. He rises, barely, before flopping back down. His body nags at him, warm and weighted, like it wouldn't hurt to sleep and find him again.

“BIRDS!” Ah. So peace was never an option. “A whole lot of birds!” Motoya repeats with greater drama, outside the door.

He comes rushing in with his camera around his neck, along with a field guide called, Essentials for Birdwatching in Japan. Kiyoomi remembers, that in another life, Motoya was an avid fan of all-things-bird, spurred on by the one time his pet canary died and they buried it, at the turn of the twentieth century. He'd then become an ornithological nightmare after that, reading up on every bird he could manage to learn about.

Motoya opens the balcony door to snap pictures, and Kiyoomi joins him. He gets it now, the birds; the sound of them comes shrill in his ears, like a symphony full of beginners. Past the curtains, all kinds of them have landed in the town: the feral parrots and sparrows, the crows and day-liking owls. Suddenly a bird-less town knows nothing but them; they feast, on the feed laid around town, and sit in the new birdhouses amongst the human homes.

“Did someone do this overnight?” Motoya asks, when he finds a birdhouse of their own on the balcony. There are seeds everywhere on the ground, ready to be eaten but not sewn.

“No,” Kiyoomi says. “He did this in the morning.”

“Who?”

“The repairman.”

“That Ushi-something guy?”

“Ushijima,” Kiyoomi corrects.

“How do you know he did that this morning?” Motoya asks.

“I had a meal with him last night.”

Motoya frowns. “Didn't I make you a meal last night?”

“It was in a dream.”

In past lives, Motoya’s usually asked something to the effect of, oh, gods dream? This time, he just grins, and looks at the birdhouse in a new light.

“I see,” he says, “so you've been dreaming about the repairman.”

Kiyoomi blinks a few times, as if he’s been struck. Would it be a crime, to send Motoya into his next life? He considers this for moment, quite seriously in fact, before pretending he didn't hear a thing.

“I'm...going into town,” Kiyoomi says, in a struggle to the door. “Will you be coming today?”

Motoya merely holds up his copy of Essentials for Birdwatching in Japan again. “No way,” he says, because he's now taken it upon himself, to be the trip’s premier avian expert. “I'll be here, looking for white-throated needletails. You go find your repairman.”

By ice, by fire, by locusts. Kiyoomi thinks all the ways, to end the likes of Komori Motoya, before leaving him amongst the fleeting birds.

By the time Kiyoomi makes it to the other side of the lake, deeper into the forest and closer towards the volcano, the birds have all followed him, roosting on low branches and full off all the seeds they could ever eat. Hanging birdhouses, swaying in the breeze, knock together to sound like wooden chimes, while trees fall at Kiyoomi’s feet.

Ushijima stands alone in a clearing, stance firm amongst the tangle of tree roots. He looks up at each of the birds — the parrots, the crows, the owls — and meets them all with a bucket of seeds. He throws said seeds, then another handful more, then another when all they do is watch, and don't eat. A few even fly away, past towards the clearest patch of sky, as if they know you cannot make homes out of pit stops. He tries again. Another tree falls. At the creak, he glances Kiyoomi’s way, up the path.

“You called all the birds in the country,” Kiyoomi says.

“Not all,” Ushijima tells him. “But many of them.”

The two stand at a distance. To Kiyoomi, it still feels like a dream until it's not; the birds look on, for their next acts of magnificence, and it makes him want to bury himself in the earth. Tired of their eavesdropping, Kiyoomi raises a hand. He waves, and sends them back to sky. The birds flock from the branches, making waves of wings and feathers; in the storm of them, he allows himself closer to Ushijima, and pretends he has no choice in the chaos of things.

“You spoke to all these birds and told them to go,” Ushijima says, once the forest finds calm again.

“They already knew they didn't belong. There are other places to fly.”

“I made bird houses.”

“Bird houses fall apart.”

This close, he knows this isn't like their dream at all. Here, they are gods, and gods can only love what they are gods of. Ushijima, this town. Kiyoomi, the end. They stand, not together, but on opposite sides, because there are lines never to be crossed and duties to uphold.

Ushijima stands there anyway, as real as a dream. When the sun hits him just right, and the wind lifts his chin, he waits, and waits, and waits, for all those who may come to seek him. The trees rise again. The breeze picks up in his favor. Tremors start under the earth, a volcano’s echoes, and rise from the ground to shake out the last of the birds and topple their hanging houses.

“Will you be dreaming again later?” Kiyoomi asks, as daring as the day will let him.

Ushijima crouches down to pick up one of the birdhouses, its roof cracked open. He presses a hand over it, a suture over a fatal wound, and looks on at the rest that have fallen.

“Yes,” says Ushijima, “though I may not be able to stay asleep.”

Over them, their volcano looms. Dormant no longer, it sends tremors, a warning, through the land.

Motoya does the math. He hates math — always has, across all his lifetimes — but he sits at the table and scribbles out a bunch of numbers and chicken scratch in earnest. “On average,” he tells Kiyoomi, “a town finds calamity within three days of you going there.”

“I see,” Kiyoomi says, as he steeps his tea. It's chamomile, which is supposed to promote good sleep, but he's not sure what effect it'll have on a god with no circadian rhythm. He looks at the box, finding no answers; still on his math kick, Motoya suggests steeping five tea bags instead of one.

“I'm not sure it works like that.”

“I don't know what you gods like,” Motoya says. “Hell, if I was one, I wouldn't be drinking tea and trying to sleep. I'd do great things like, oh, I don't know...play a professional sport or something. Baseball. Volleyball. Anything, really.”

“Too noisy,” Kiyoomi states.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're the type of god who hates the sound of potato chip bags opening.”

“Yes.” Kiyoomi shudders. He's absolutely right about that.

“Still, a god, nonetheless.” Motoya looks out the window, as if he's still searching for birds long gone. “Three days, to uproot a whole town,” he repeats. “You could do that instantly, if you wanted, right?”

“It's just something that has to be done properly,” Kiyoomi says. “There are some gods I've seen, they rush through things. They think it can all be done with a snap of their fingers, but all it causes is needless destruction.”

“You're kind, for a god of calamity.”

“Not really.” Kiyoomi settles on two tea bags. “I just don't like the mess.”

“Well,” Motoya says. “In either case, we’ve been here three days now. You think we’ll see the end of this place tomorrow?”

The water boils in the kettle, and Kiyoomi can think of nothing but sleep.

“No,” comes the answer. “For this, I think I'll need more time than that.”

When Kiyoomi finds him in a dream again, Ushijima is standing over a washing machine with a box of detergent in his hand. He's tending to his bed ware, judging by the heavy duty dial setting, and the way the metal box jumps up from the concrete like it’s tired of spinning cotton.

Today, the dream takes place in an entire house. The kitchen, in view, is the same as they ate in before, judging by the blueprints on the fridge, and the familiar sight of stovetop kettles. In the common space, yellowed architectural magazines form a skyline over a coffee table. There’s grid paper galore, while a drafting desk, in the corner, stays empty and polished. Photos hang everywhere, of old houses: engawa verandas, and sliding doors, their neatly-kept gardens. Framed posters of world wonders, like the Chichen Itza and the Taj Mahal, loom like specters from other continents.

Kiyoomi drifts towards the clutter, no dust to be found. The lack of it surprises him, until the fantasy strikes him: Ushijima dusting, and cleaning, before putting it all back in place. Photos keep their gloss. Colors fade, but not to grey. A devout makes a shrine, an ode to memory.

A silver placard gleams on the drafting desk. Utsui Takashi, it says. Architect.

“Architect?” Kiyoomi asks, looking over the name again a second time.

Ushijima follows his line of vision. He pauses a moment, letting a finished timer fill the quiet.

“My father.” Ushijima pulls a damp comforter out of the washing machine. Folding it neatly over the bend of an arm, he walks down the hall to the garden.

Together, they put up the comforter on an empty clothesline. Kiyoomi doesn’t ask about Ushijima’s father. In truth, gods don't really have fathers, just the seas, where they emerge from, or valleys, where they sprout. Some gods form like condensation. Some fall as fruit on trees, first snow. If they have a family, they were not born from it. If they have a family, it was most certainly found.

Comforter-as-wall, Kiyoomi finally understands what they mean by security blanket. On the other side, only glimpses of Ushijima linger, from feet in the grass, to hands, working along the clothesline. Kiyoomi remembers to lay his groundwork. To know him. He inches to the side, closer to him. He throws his hands up to the line, courage by the way of a graze; under the guise of a duvet, Kiyoomi pretends it’s accidental contact.

In no mood for antics, the blanket slips off the line, begging for a wash again. The two of come face to face, clear under the sun. Kiyoomi parts first, fast. Ushijima looks no worse for the touch.

“You say you've come to coax the end,” he says. Ushijima crouches down, patting the dirt off white cloth. “But you've lured me, into other things.”

“Have I?” Kiyoomi asks.

“Yes.”

“And that is?”

Ushijima folds the blanket, corner by corner. Even dirtied, it looks right, in his care.

“Saying it out loud. Father. I haven't had a chance to do that in many years.”

Ushijima gives no indication, if this is good, or bad. But Kiyoomi knows, by the way he clutches the cloth, that it must mean something.

I still don't know, what's under the lake; but today, I let my hands skim across the surface, just to understand.

In dreams, they get to be: godless, hungry, and living, in the lives they imagine.

In waking, they find each other, on opposite ends of a dried-up lake. Ushijima goes first to him this time, appearing on the same line of a former shore. He looks up to the sky, as if he will find the water in new clouds, one type of life into another.

Nothing but dawn reigns over them, blemished with faded stars and one watchful moon. Kiyoomi waits, bated, as if he's finally hit a nerve. He imagines: Ushijima, pushing him down onto the sand, hands around his throat; he imagines, the weight of him, looking to bury another god’s body in the ground. But no violence comes. In the face of unprecedented things, eyes spark again, in recognition. You did this, they say, without saying at all, and Kiyoomi does nothing but press on into the dead lake’s crater.

“You wanted to keep the trees alive,” Kiyoomi says, “but with the earth the way it is, they had to take the life from somewhere.” He crouches down, finds one of many rocks. The bed of the lake is full of them, all stone and rounded sea glass, a mosaic under their broken mirror. The one in his hands is a semi-clear yellow, a hazy gold, flecks of pure life suspended in solid form. Into his pocket it goes. He pretends it doesn't remind him of Ushijima.

“Did you do this?” Ushijima asks, of the bottom of the lake.

Kiyoomi finds Ushijima’s reflection amongst the stones. He thinks to say, you know I didn't. You know I didn't, because this is how things go, under the surface. That for all that one sees, above ground, time whittles, and whittles, into polished things, things you may not even notice, even with years gone by. All those stones. He thinks of all of them, resting at the bottom of seas, and oceans, places Ushijima has never seen, outside the houses he guards.

“No,” Kiyoomi says instead. It wouldn't be right, to deliver a truth one must come to on his own. Instead, he stares back towards a town's clearing, roofs peering through tree boughs. “But those houses — your father built them all, didn't he? I realized from the blueprints.”

A constant murmur, the tremors pick up again, like roots spreading out from the volcano. It shakes one house, a boom on impact, and sends it crumbling under the veil of the forest. Ushijima doesn't answer, but Kiyoomi knows: that these are his father’s houses, by the way Ushijima runs back up the crater; and that a god can be a boy, protecting what a loved one’s left.

Back on the main road, Ushijima presses his left hand over the debris of the fallen house. He waits. It does not rise again, too tired to stand. Kiyoomi lets his gaze lower, no words needed to console or pity, while Ushijima forges on, into the mess. By his own hands, he begins to dig; with his left, he tries raising it and raising it again.

All around them, a few more homes fall, one by one, empty of life and any will to house it. Ushijima looks on, feet caught in a thousand directions.

The tremors quicken, and deepen as if to bellow; while a dawn, once clear, welcomes gray into the sky.

I have never once been sad to leave a town. Places rise and fall, and you leave as you are meant to.

But when feet shuffle, unsure of where to go, I cannot help but notice. I wish to say, ‘you will find your bearings. It's okay, to bound off this broken earth.’

There are reasons Motoya gets to be an assistant, and then a cook, and a failed bunraku star-turned-bird watcher. If gods can only love what they're the gods of, mortals don’t have to love a thing. Everything at once. Either way. There's a freedom to it, living without being the god of x, or the god of y; Motoya claims he's jealous, of the immortality, the ability, but he’s the one that gets to be, simply, in the rooms he decides to enter. He can sit down and complete 1000-piece puzzles. Finish books on birdwatching, or meteorology, or cooking dinners for two. Kiyoomi looks at his own eternal tasks, this duty to the end. He knows that everything must end in a cosmic sense, but just once he’d like it, mundane, one day done for another.

Motoya stares up from his puzzle, realizing that Kiyoomi has been there all along.

“You look like you’ve been through hell,” he says.

“Do I?” Kiyoomi asks, inspecting his shirt, swiping once at his cheek. “I thought I got all the house dust off in the shower.”

“I didn't mean it in that sense.” Motoya fits one more piece into his puzzle and grins, at the effort of it. “I can just see it on your face.”

Kiyoomi stays at the door, listless enough to lean in the entryway. He supposes, he too, could finish 1000-piece puzzles, and take up books on birdwatching. But the ends, the ones that speak to him, would nag, a whisper turned into begging. Please find me, please see me through, please bring me to my proper end. A god must go. A god does not rest.

“Funny,” Motoya says with a sigh. He keeps his head bowed towards the table, as if commiserating, at heart, is a reverent thing. “Maybe it doesn't matter, if one is a god or not. We all get tired, regardless. The road is long.”

Another tremor rocks the house, sending a few pieces right off the table. Motoya lets them remain on the floor for a moment, before picking them back up. He still has the whole puzzle to go, really, a 1000-part journey to the end, but he pieces it together, happy in its little completions.

“We can't stay here, can we?” Motoya asks. “I saw the last cars leave. Soon this house will go, too, right?”

“Yes,” Kiyoomi says, with a sorry look towards the unfinished puzzle.

Motoya sighs, but it doesn't eat at his smile. He begins putting the pieces away, once again to scatter in the box.

“This happens every time we go somewhere,” he says. “I think, maybe this time, I’ll get to work on this old thing. But then — woosh, time to go again.” He closes the lid on the box. “Ah well. Another day. Maybe in another life.”

Kiyoomi finds envy, in the presence of little ends. Motoya pats him on the shoulder, on his way to pack, as if to comfort him for this.

In a garden not his, Kiyoomi folds up the comforter from the clothesline. He places it, properly, in a basket waiting in the hallway, and lets himself dream through an empty house. No sight of Ushijima, he waits until he realizes he isn't coming. Sun cutting through the rooms, Kiyoomi hopes for shade, so the magazines, still stacked, lose no more of their color. He looms over the drafting desk. Under the placard, a folded letter rests. The handwriting, neat, and small, and barely heard, still speaks through the ages.

To my son, it says.

I know what they tell you, don't rule with your left hand. But I've clutched it for myself, and felt the warmth of someone who should feel like wind, passing through me.

You are special, my boy. With the passing of life, I know you will always hold it in your palm, however you may find it.

Kiyoomi returns the letter back to where he found it. In the kitchen, he makes himself a meal, a hodgepodge of things called the Thursday experiments. He knows there are no days here. But Kiyoomi dreams of them anyway, those days going from one into the other; days, filled and passing, with someone else.

As smoke steals blue from the sky, Kiyoomi sees Motoya to his car, filled to the brim with transient things: suitcases, and books, and puzzles, meant for the next town where they'll meet again.

“Are you sure you’ll be fine here?” Motoya asks, his expression etched in lines. It’s a face that says, I mean this as family, with concern that transcends what he knows of gods and what they can withstand.

Kiyoomi nods. “I'll come find you in a few days.”

Motoya doesn't fight him on this, but then again, he never does, when it comes to things like this. “Okay,” he says, almost a whisper, almost to be expected at this point. “But you’ll really regret it, when I finish this puzzle without you.”

Kiyoomi sighs; still, he lets his shoulders lower, in the comfort of his words. This is also something Motoya’s told him in his last three lifetimes, as if knowing just what to say is something that weaves itself through the eons.

“Then we’ll just start over, if you do.”

(Kiyoomi, too, says this every time.)

They part: Motoya in his shitty car, and Kiyoomi, towards a blooming peak. He walks, past the broken houses, the empty paths; past the mosaic crater, and the fallen trees. He walks, until paths rise uphill, and steep.

He walks, and walks, until he finds the same house from their dreams.

Kiyoomi finds no sentences to describe it. He goes back to words again. In the dream, it had been ’pristine,’ nothing special but neatly kept, with walls that seemed like it could withstand anything, given the care it was given. But here, nestled deep under near-disaster, it barely stands in the face of some former glory: the walls, he'd say, were ’ashened’,; its foundation ’sunken,’ over the edge of a cliff like a jacket over a chair. Shingles, missing, ring like missing teeth, while a door, still hinged, creaks open because it can no longer close. Kiyoomi finds a clothesline, strewn downward from the house to a fallen tree, waiting its turn to snap, while a comforter, wafting in the soot, catches fire from raining embers.

He watches, for a moment, this new lit-up storm; he raises a palm to it, collects a flame in his hand, and sets it free, to do its duty.

Inside, dust layers the house like white sheets over estate furniture. It hazes the air, thick enough that he can barely see; the faded colors of magazines, still blushing in the dream, have faded completely to grey. Posters wilt off the walls, while photos lose their subjects; a washing machine, dead on the ground, lays on its side, wires spewing out from its slacked mouth.

Kiyoomi knows: this is not Ushijima’s doing. That a house like this is what happens in natural decay. The walls will fall; the floors will rot; even what a father’s built will burn away.

Ushijima sits alone in a room with nothing but a futon, no comforter to shield him. An open door to a veranda greets him with flames. He stares, reaching out as Kiyoomi did, before taking the palm back.

“You coax out the end,” he says to Kiyoomi again, finding him over a shoulder.

“Yes.”

“The day I met you, I felt a burning in my chest,” Ushijima confesses. “Something I couldn’t quiet. It felt like the day I came from the volcano.”

Kiyoomi looms over him on the futon, before willing himself to sit. When it all catches fire, collapsing the roof over the veranda, the heat singes, warming palms, and cheeks, tips of fingers. It burns at Kiyoomi’s eyes, making them wet. The end is nigh, the hazy orange says, its glow a reminder of how it’ll burn until there's nothing left.

“But it'll be over, before I know it,” Ushijima says, laying down; his tone, right on the edge of asking, settles on a statement of fact. This keeps in the air, past haze, and ash, like he knows he will rise again.

For now, he lets his eyes close. A hand comes over Kiyoomi’s, impossibly warm, and tells him everything about staying.

I don't think I've written much about the volcano. I don't think there is much to write about it, because there are so many — 270 in the country, in fact — to survey for yourself. We all know they rise, and rumble, and explode. That magma turns to lava, and eats everything in its path.

But no one talks about the way they break the land, only to make it new again.

In their dayless dream, Ushijima fries the eggs while Kiyoomi washes the rice in the sink. The basin overfills, and Kiyoomi thinks of the ocean.

I was born from the water, he wants to say. So he does. “I want to show you where I've come from.”

They bound off the veranda steps after eating. In dreaming, they are not gods, but people who can go anywhere. There’s a beach this time, a small no one knows, so they call it theirs and run up the shore. No shoes stay on. Shirts fly off in the wind, never to be seen again.

(And Kiyoomi, who’s always hated the cling of sand, bears it this once, for the sake of another.)

Ushijima stops short of crashing with an incoming wave, and stares it down in challenge. He wades. Kiyoomi follows after. In dreaming, neither of them can still the waters, but it doesn't matter; they meet its beating with resilience, and go in deeper with each step. Around them, water comes to sky. Sky comes to water. Two blues merge, to surround them on all sides.

“Where are we going next?” Ushijima finally asks, the deepest they've gone.

Hands linking under the waves, Kiyoomi smiles.

“On our way,” he tells him, “to a proper end.”

In dreaming, they find a city. During the day, its streets fill with people, crosswalks jammed with those rushing to get to the other side. On such a day that never ends, the two of them find a rooftop, far above the masses.

(Well, maybe not so far up. Kiyoomi’s miscalculated the height.)

Instead of a skyscraper, they're on the roof of a six-floor apartment, surrounded by other residential buildings of similar stature. Ushijima doesn't mind though, judging by the way he peers past the billboards and telephone wire; he looks back, towards Kiyoomi, eyes bright with world wonders.

“My father used to draw places like this,” he says.

“Who knows,” Kiyoomi tells him. “Maybe you’ll find him again, out here.”

They stay for the breeze, and steal new shirts from the roof’s clothesline. Across the way, the city puts up thousands of hanging threads, with comforters and shirts and clean things, all swaying in the wind. He catches Ushijima, smiling behind a hanging bedsheet. Kiyoomi breathes in deep at the sight, and tears their barrier away.

On the rooftop, he decides he has a favorite smell. One that’ll remind him, eternally, of time spent together.

Fading detergent and fresh linens. Ushijima.

On a train towards the last stop, the two of them sit together in an empty car. The day, still keeping sun, looks to drench instead of beam; in and out of tunnels, the light goes, only to come back in late shades of gold.

“If I can help it, I normally don’t take the train,” Kiyoomi admits. “But this isn't too bad.”

In their quiet, he notices how easy hands curl together. In Ushijima’s lap, the warmth feels like that of midday: a grip that keeps, at least in the meanwhile, while loose enough to know that all things fade.

“It won't be the same after this,” Ushijima says.

Kiyoomi thinks of cycles: beginnings and ends, the dance of them, switching places, coming over and over again. He remembers the things that come in between, the chances to be and be their best.

“No,” he tells Ushijima. “It won't. But you have the blueprints, to make it better.”

In their grip, Kiyoomi thinks to tighten it; but he remains, just as they are, in reverence of a passing day.

They find the lost shirts from the beach, strewn about on the house’s veranda. Ushijima puts them in the machine. Adds the soap. Keeps the dial setting on delicate. The laundry runs, the last load of the day, and the two of them get to packing the rest of it.

Kiyoomi sweeps the empty spaces, while Ushijima sorts through his things. There are memories he keeps: like Utsui’s letter, the placard, the blueprints for later. The drafting desk, still gleaming, asks for another chance elsewhere. Photos, though faded, keep their shine like a promise. A father beams in one of them. He has his arm around Ushijima, proud as can be, family found by the way one holds his son up to the world and the wonders beyond it.

The washing machine stops. A sun wavers from gold to orange, filling the room with the glow of parting. Kiyoomi searches for Ushijima across the way, wondering if he'll equate it with fire.

“Soon,” Kiyoomi says, his way of saying not to fear it.

Ushijima doesn't fly away, or disappear, or run, from it.

Slow, like a walk up the road, he kisses Kiyoomi, the broom still in his hands.

Two gods meet, a dayless dream into sunset. Kiyoomi finds him again, by the small space between their faces. With no shrines to speak of, no things left to pack, they make one out of a futon.

“Soon,” Ushijima says into Kiyoomi’s ear this time, without lowering his voice to meet him. It comes as it would across the room, so clear, so close, that Kiyoomi can’t help but flinch. He stiffens for a moment, never one to keep anyone this near; but he gives into him in anyway, as if one can seek shelter in haunted places.

They stay like this for a while, thresholds broken — Kiyoomi, crossing his, and Ushijima, waiting on the other side. Under him, Ushijima is warm in the way that never hides anything. He breathes hard, into the curve of Kiyoomi’s neck, and lets hands roam with the heart of his palms, down an arm, and then a hip, and the length of a leg. His touch, plain in how it wants, takes up everything; it warms Kiyoomi, past the point of comfort, and reminds him of the stolen shirt, festering on his back.

“Your name,” Kiyoomi says, huffing into Ushijima’s shoulder. “Before you leave, I want to know it.” It dawns on him, to want this name, to carry it, past this particular end; that if gods really are to live forever, to keep it, until the universe’s last breath.

Ushijima raises himself, if only barely, off the futon. He smiles, too small, but enough, and tells him.

“Wakatoshi.”

“Wakatoshi?”

“Yes.”

At this, Kiyoomi lies back. He hides his face in hands.

“Is...something the matter with that?” Ushijima asks. Kiyoomi peers between his fingers and sees red — Ushijima, no, Wakatoshi’s face, embarrassed, for once.

“No,” Kiyoomi says. “I think it's just right.”

Kiyoomi decides this is not a god’s name, or a mortal man’s. It's just right, he decides, as Wakatoshi leans down to meet him once more, prying hands off his face and kissing the palms himself. It's just right, he knows, like taking his clothes off with the right person, and just right, like two gods tangled in the same bed. He pretends they aren’t gods at all. In dreaming, they're just together, living in this house; in dreaming, they eat meals and do laundry and clean. Kiyoomi learns him, slowly, without needing to memorize every part at once, while Wakatoshi loves by the way of bare hands. Those are the first things he learns, those hands. In dreaming, they remain — just like this, open to receive and never to end.

Kiyoomi breathes out and wrangles Wakatoshi closer. He thinks to hide at moments like this, because without godhood he is just someone, bare, on his back; but he sees Wakatoshi, and stays. Kiyoomi lets himself be seen back.

“How lucky are we?” Kiyoomi asks. “To get to be?”

Wakatoshi cups Kiyoomi’s face, and lets his palm press like permanent sun.

In answer, he kisses Kiyoomi: again, and again, and again.

I woke up in the rubble, no signs of life around me.

And yet, I know you’re still there: sleeping, and dreaming, of the day you’ll rise again.

Years later, one-hundred-and-twenty to be exact, Motoya complains of headaches over breakfast.

“I had the strangest dream,” he says, still with his mouth full. “You walked straight up to a volcano, stayed for its eruption, and lived to write about it. But by that time, everyone thought your travel logs were definitely cursed, so that's why you switched over to fiction.”

“Is that so?” Kiyoomi asks, still one for picking at the umeboshi.

“It was all a big thing, I think. Even I wanted to cry, seeing you all covered in soot. I met you, by my car, and you were covered head to toe with it. But you didn't complain. Not one word. You just sat quiet the whole way back.”

Motoya blinks into awareness at his own story, like he's on the verge of remembering.

“Well, whatever,” he says, finishing the rest of his rice, plus the omelet he’s ordered on the side. “It was all just a crazy dream, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Kiyoomi says. “A dream.”

“You ever have one so vivid, you swear you could live in it?”

“Once.”

“Just once?” Motoya asks.

“It was the only one worth remembering.”

Motoya calls the whole thing strange. After, they split the check for the meal and hit the road again. Towns pass on the highway, countless pockets of home-and-shop, people-and-place. A blur of houses line up along the horizon, flitting away as soon as they are seen, exposing new sun between gaps. They drive, and play music. Motoya speaks of things like weather, and birdwatching, and domestic beer. “I've always really liked Yebisu the most,” he tells Kiyoomi, as if this isn't already a known fact. “I feel like it's the key to unlocking universal truths.”

“We’ll get you some later,” says Kiyoomi.

“Aw, really?” Motoya picks up speed on the gas, en route to their next town. “I wonder what I'll realize today, then.”

By late afternoon, the two of them stop in a town called Utsui.

Motoya is immediately charmed: by the old-style houses, rising up towards the hills, the souvenir shops, lined with colored rocks and sea glass. Birdhouses hang from everywhere, like lush tree boughs, and the balconies of houses, while people crowd the streets with life all up and down the main road. “It's golden hour,” one child exclaims, while the sun, on the last of its daylight, floods the whole town with her last performance. Birds fly over, sparrows and owls and crows, making flocks of different feathers.

Running off, in pursuit of the indigenous parrots, Motoya swears he’ll get the reservation sorted out for the rental house later. Meanwhile, Kiyoomi watches the birds fly off, following flight paths to an active volcano. It rises, violet into the distant sky, a small smoke always steaming from its peak; it stands, no need for names, or shrines, and reminds everyone of its presence.

Kiyoomi follows old paths, shuffling along with the crowd and wishing he had empty roads like before. But they go, all the same, back to old lakes and forests. Here, the water runs clear now, to reveal color on the bottom. So many stones rest there, like sun, like the one he keeps in his pocket. The trees, proud of their stature, no longer bend for anyone. Kiyoomi gathers wind in his palms, but the wind does not listen; it streams, past his fingertips, and guides him up familiar cliffs.

Towards the top, a house rests alone, more mundane than Kiyoomi’s remembered it. But shingles line up neatly, while the walls wear a fresh coat of paint. There are flowers, growing in the garden, while a clothesline waves by the way of bedsheets, swaying in the breeze. Kiyoomi feels at one of them to check for dampness. Dry enough, he folds them properly like before; by an open door, he finds a basket, where he returns them for safekeeping.

The sitting room, now neatly organized, has just been swept. A broom rests next to a drafting desk, now prominently displayed in the middle of everything. The pictures, framed, hang on the walls. A father still smiles. A son, found again, does the same.

Kiyoomi breathes in. Fading detergent and linen. A washing machine goes.

In the room where they last met, a god dozes, left arm splayed out over an open futon.

“You're here,” he says, without opening his eyes.

“Did you sense me?”

“No,” says Wakatoshi. “I saw your name on the rental paperwork again.”

Kiyoomi grins at the honesty of this, but thanks every syllable of his human name, for keeping in another’s memory.

“Have you come to coax me again?” Wakatoshi asks, all a-matter-of-fact.

“No,” Kiyoomi is the one to answer this time. “I'm between endings.”

“I see.”

“You see?”

“Because if you were here to end me again,” Wakatoshi says, “I'm sure I'd beat you this time.”

Kiyoomi lays next to him on the futon, cheek to the crook of an arm, and shuts his eyes, too. No need for dreaming today, he takes in the last of the sun. He lets it dance across his eyelids, that same orange haze, and opens.

Wakatoshi smiles, the same light in his eyes. Kiyoomi thinks he could write whole books about this, at the sight.

But he doesn't, not today, and lets himself come close enough to love, as gods like them do.