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“Miya Atsumu,” Kiyoomi reads aloud. “Anaphylaxis.”
This is the first time Kiyoomi, reaper of souls, meets Miya Atsumu. ‘Meets’ in only the loosest sense of the word; ‘meets’ in the sense that Kiyoomi, great hulking wings and all, looms over his dead body and peels the soul neatly off of his skeleton with masterful precision and deadly sharp fingernails.
Well, he would have, were it not for Miya Atsumu’s miraculous recovery. Kiyoomi glares at his vomit-yellow hair splayed out on the hospital bed and wonders if he has heard of toner. Perhaps he just doesn’t care; it makes sense for someone who apparently takes ‘may contain peanuts’ as a challenge.
These are Kiyoomi’s least favourite sort of assignments; he has quotas to meet and coworkers to show up. Miracles waste valuable time on the clock. Still, Miya Atsumu is one of many thousands of miracles and Kiyoomi forgets his name like he’s forgotten the millions of souls he’s ferried to the great beyond.
The dead mean nothing to Kiyoomi; humans are as good as nonexistent until it’s time to take their souls.
“Miya Atsumu,” Kiyoomi reads aloud, “car accident. Car accident, car accident, accident.” The words take on an odd shape on his tongue.
Miya Atsumu, he thinks. The name feels familiar on his tongue. He finds Miya Atsumu in surgery; Kiyoomi hates surgeries. There are doctors shouting and nurses running and the familiar buzz of a flatline heartbeat. Still, Miya Atsumu might wake up, and taking a soul before it’s ready to leave would mean a strike on Kiyoomi’s record.
After forty-nine seconds, Miya Atsumu’s heartbeat resumes. His piss-yellow hair is awfully bright against the grim background of the hospital room. He can’t be older than twenty or twenty-one; an early death, or it would have been if he actually died.
“Awfully serious, aren’t you,” says Kuroo upon Kiyoomi’s return. He is Kiyoomi’s least favourite coworker; his paperwork is messy and his hair is unprofessional. “Most of us like it when they recover. It’s kind of a—”
“Miracle. Miracle, I know,” Kiyoomi interrupts. “I don’t care.”
Kiyoomi was human once; all reapers were, but it’s been so long he doesn’t remember anything important, only brief, fragmented flashes. Time isn’t quite so strict in the nebulous in-between space he currently occupies. It’s hard to care about any individual human life when they pass in the blink of an eye.
Kuroo’s dark wings twitch; a newbie, Kiyoomi thinks. Not quite used to the wings, not quite used to the dead. “Your numbers are high,” Kuroo says. “Don’t you talk to them?”
“I have no reason to. That’s not our job.” Humans are fragile, easily frightened creatures. There is no point with arguing with them; they ask if they’re going to hell or heaven or purgatory or some infinite black void, sobbing and screaming and shouting and begging. It’s irritating.
“They’re scared, though,” Kuroo points out. He gives Kiyoomi a quick once-over. “Of you especially, I’m sure.”
“Not my problem.” He spreads his oilslick wings and leaves without another word.
“Wow,” says Kenma, “again?”
“What?” Kiyoomi says. “Again, again.”
Kenma is the Boss; he hands out the assignments from behind a mahogany desk that is much too big for his small, skeletal frame. He is perpetually sleepy and blatantly disrespects the dress code by wearing a kangaroo-pocket hoodie and drawstring sweatpants instead of the customary black suit.
“Again,” Kenma repeats, gesturing toward the papers in front of him.
Miya Atsumu, reads the sheet on top of Kiyoomi’s stack. Drowning.
“Oh,” says Kiyoomi. He remembers the first two incidents now; anaphylaxis, car accident, and as of today, drowning. “Again.”
“Hmm.” Kenma fiddles with the strings of his grimy hoodie; it’s the hoodie he’s been wearing for the last decade, or possibly century, since he got transferred from fieldwork to a desk job. No one was quite sure why Kenma transferred; it was the first time anything of the sort had ever happened. “Maybe you should just kill him.”
“Maybe I should,” Kiyoomi agrees, though that would be a strike on his record that he cannot have.
Kiyoomi spreads his wings and crosses the cloudy, twilit boundary between the human world and Everywhere Else. He finds Miya Atsumu lying shirtless on a riverbank, deadly still and blue in the face. Crouching beside him is another man his age and Miya Atsumu’s clone. Has his soul already been separated? How—
“Twins,” Kiyoomi mutters. The clone’s hair is gray, not that offensive yellow.
“Fucking bastard,” the clone says, voice wet and shaky.
“He’ll be fine,” the other one promises, though he doesn’t sound very confident. It’s then that Kiyoomi notices the brown-haired friend is doing chest compressions on Miya Atsumu. “Paramedics are on their way and he’s come back to life, like, twice before.”
The twin doesn’t respond. Kiyoomi steps around them to wrench Miya Atsumu’s soul from his body when suddenly, Miya Atsumu starts hacking uncontrollably, spewing nasty river water all over his friend and brother. The twin bursts into ugly sobs.
“No fucking way,” Kiyoomi says. Miya Atsumu’s eyes seem to catch on him for half an instant before he doubles over again. Kiyoomi makes a swift exit.
Somehow, Miya Atsumu becomes a legend.
“Have you seen Miya lately?” asks Sugawara, a reaper older than Kiyoomi with fluffy gray hair and wings so massive even Kiyoomi feels cowed in his presence. “He’s so lucky.”
“Not since the drowning,” Kiyoomi replies warily.
“Drowning. I think that’s how I died.” He sighs. “I used to get so jealous of all the miracles. It would have been nice to live a little longer on Earth. I don’t remember much from before except there was this guy… I don’t know his name, but most of my memories or with him. I’d have liked to have a little more time with him.”
“I don’t remember anything,” Kiyoomi says at Sugawara’s expectant stare.
“Come on, Sakusa, you must remember something,” Sugawara insists, narrowing his eyes.
He shrugs. “Not really. A few faces, but they don’t mean anything to me. I remember a stray cat.”
Sugawara claps him on the shoulder with far too much force and a blinding grin. “Well, you’ll just have to keep making new memories!”
“Right,” Kiyoomi says, ducking out of Sugawara’s iron grip. “I have to go.”
“Don’t be a stranger, Sakusa,” Sugawara calls after him.
A dangerous blood clot at age twenty-four puts Miya Atsumu up to four impossible recoveries. Kiyoomi watches his heart restart in the ambulance. The paramedics breathe a sigh of relief.
Instead of flying off to his next assignment, Kiyoomi follows the ambulance back to the hospital. Already waiting for Miya Atsumu is his clone and a small redhead.
“I’m going to start charging him for the therapy I’m going to need after this,” says Twin.
“It’s not his fault,” says the orange-haired child. “He might be dead, Osamu-san.”
“That’s what he wants you to think.” The twin, Osamu, sniffles. “He always does this. Nothing’s killed him yet.”
Miya Atsumu sleeps peacefully in a sterile hospital bed, somehow breathing.
Kiyoomi returns to Everywhere Else and finds Kuroo loitering outside of Kenma’s office. Inside, Kenma is busy with Tsukishima, a new reaper. “I don’t know why everyone cares so much about Miya,” he says. “I mean, it’s not like four times is impossible. It’s not even a record.”
“How would you know?” Kiyoomi asks. He does not ask how word spread so quickly; he’s learned not to question these things. “You haven’t been here a hundred years.”
“Kenma told me,” Kuroo says, as if this is obvious.
Kiyoomi glares. Kenma is the Boss. He doesn’t talk to anyone, really, and Kuroo is a baby; what’s he doing with Kenma? “You’ve changed your tune,” is all Kiyoomi decides to say.
Kuroo laughs. “I still think you could be a little nicer. I just don’t see what’s so interesting about Miya.”
“Me neither,” says Kiyoomi, and ignores him.
A peaceful three years pass without Miya Atsumu.
“Wow,” Kenma says as he passes on Kiyoomi’s assignments. “Maybe he’ll die this time.”
Kiyoomi scoffs. “Doubtful.”
Miya Atsumu, shouts the file in twelve-point Cambria font, anaphylaxis. Again?
It’s quick this time; his heartbeat has resumed by the time Kiyoomi arrives. It takes a lot of energy to find a human; there are a few billion, after all, and ferrying the dead doesn’t come with benefits like psychic powers. He waits a few minutes just in case Miya Atsumu’s condition worsens and he dies, but unfortunately, Kiyoomi is not that lucky.
“Would you just fucking die already,” he mutters.
“What the fuck,” says Miya Atsumu, scrambling back on his bed. “What the fuck? Who are you? Am I dreaming?” He points at Kiyoomi. “Are you the grim reaper? Why are you hot?”
Kiyoomi freezes. He’s waited too long; human time is so difficult to grasp. The nurses have ducked out of the room. It is only Sakusa Kiyoomi and Miya Atsumu, staring at one another. “You are awake,” he says. “My name is Sakusa Kiyoomi.”
“Cool,” Atsumu says. “I’m just gonna—”
Kiyoomi grabs his wrist before he can hit the call button. “It’s no use. They can’t see me.”
Atsumu swallows and snatches his hand back from Kiyoomi’s vice-like grip. “I guess I died for real.”
“No,” Kiyoomi says, “I’m not that lucky.”
“Excuse me?”
Kiyoomi spreads his wings and takes flight without so much as a goodbye. Human life means nothing to him; he couldn’t care less about a single one of them, except for Miya Atsumu, who he viciously hates.
“You talked to him?” says Sugawara, frowning. Nothing makes Kiyoomi feel worse about himself than a Sugawara frown. “That’s bad news, you know.”
“I am well aware, thank you,” Kiyoomi replies. “It was a mistake.”
Sugawara sighs. “So serious, Sakusa. Just be careful.”
Three days after Miya Atsumu’s thirtieth birthday, he breaks his neck.
He breaks his neck and he has some rare blood thing and he concusses himself playing volleyball of all things. Kiyoomi no longer gives the details too much attention. He finds Miya Atsumu lying in a hospital bed, cold and dead. Three minutes later, he gasps awake.
Kiyoomi should leave. He does not.
“You,” Miya Atsumu slurs. It is the middle of the night. Miya Atsumu should not be awake. “Sexy angel.”
“Not an angel,” Kiyoomi corrects. “I am leaving.”
“Wait,” Miya Atsumu says urgently. “Wait. I’m. Tired. Alone. You have wings.”
With a sigh, Kiyoomi spreads his wings; the room is too small to open them all the way. Atsumu grins. “Wings,” he says thoughtfully.
“Wings,” Kiyoomi agrees.
A nurse walks in. Something about heartbeats and are you alright, Miya-san, your heartbeat sped up so quickly! Weird dream, says Miya Atsumu, staring directly at Kiyoomi. Grim reaper paid a house call.
Scary, says the nurse. Go back to sleep, Miya-san.
Kiyoomi doesn’t tear souls from their vessels twenty-four hours a day. Reapers have reasonable workdays, flexible schedules, and ample time off. When he’s not on shift, Kiyoomi likes to explore Everywhere Else; as far as he can tell, there isn’t much of anything and he usually forgets everything he’s found as soon as he returns anyway. Reapers aren’t supposed to leave their home, of course, and the rules have a funny way of making themselves known.
Sometimes, the newbies visit Earth. This is allowed but not encouraged. There is nothing on Earth for reapers but souls to steal. Chasing fragmented memories is pointless and causes unnecessary pain.
“Visiting Earth?” asks Kuroo, who is returning from Earth. He grins in that peculiar, toothy way of his. His shiny black wings push the clouds around them into strange shapes. “Any particular reason?”
“It’s something to do,” Kiyoomi replies. “That’s all. That’s all, that’s all.”
I am bored, Kiyoomi thinks, that is all.
“Hey,” says Miya Atsumu, sitting up in his bed. His eyes are wide and his breath is quick. “Am I dying?”
“No,” Kiyoomi assures him. And then: “I wish you would die.”
Miya Atsumu laughs awkwardly. “Um. Excuse me?”
“My coworkers never shut up about you. Six miracles,” Kiyoomi says. “It’s obnoxious.”
“Coworkers,” Miya Atsumu echoes. “Miracles? I thought you weren’t an angel.”
“I’m not. I just take your souls to where you need to go.” He looks around. “Your apartment is very small, Miya Atsumu. There is no room for my wings.”
Miya Atsumu laughs, a real laugh this time. “Sorry, your highness. How did you even get in here? I didn’t hear anything.”
“Walls are,” Kiyoomi waves his hand vaguely, “not very real. But I can’t go through them in front of you. It might cause... problems for you.”
“Okaaaay,” says Miya Atsumu. “Cool cool cool. Problems. Very cool. Why are you here?”
Kiyoomi stops at this. Why is he here? It had been a spur of the moment decision, really. “I was bored,” he says. “Not much to do up there.”
“Like in heaven?”
“I’ve told you I’m not an angel, Miya Atsumu,” he says, pointing a grotesquely sharp finger in Miya Atsumu’s direction. “Don’t test my patience. Not heaven. Everywhere Else.”
“Yeah, obviously it’s not here, but what is it?” Miya Atsumu presses. “And just call me Atsumu, freak.”
“Atsumu,” Kiyoomi echoes. “Atsumu, Atsumu, Atsumu.”
“What, man?”
Kiyoomi shrugs. “Tastes weird. And Everywhere Else is a place. That’s what it’s called.”
“Oh,” says Atsumu. “So there’s others? Like you, with the wings?”
“Yes. Lots.” Kiyoomi sighs. “Why is your hair like that?”
Atsumu glares. “Shut up, my hair’s great.”
“It’s better with toner,” Kiyoomi acquiesces.
“Why do you want me dead?” Atsumu says, looking more irritated by the minute.
“I want you dead,” Kiyoomi repeats. “I want you dead, I want you dead because you waste my time. I find you and you come back to life.”
“I feel like me not being dead is more important than your,” Atsumu pauses to grimace, “schedule.”
“Maybe to you,” Kiyoomi says. “Not to me. What’s eighty years to thirty? I’m hundreds of years old, or maybe thousands. I don’t think I remember how long a year is. Time has so many rules in this world.”
Atsumu sighs. “This is so weird. Are all of them like you? With the wings and the nails and the repeating things? Why is that?”
Kiyoomi bristles. “I think I repeated things when I was human, too. Not that it’s any of your business. The wings are so we can fly, obviously, and the nails are for taking your souls.”
Atsumu snickers. “Very funny.”
“I don’t joke,” says Kiyoomi. “I can show you if you want me to demonstrate.”
Raising his hands in surrender, Atsumu shakes his head. “I’ll pass, thanks. Don’t want to die tonight.”
“I hope you die,” Kiyoomi says, “but I’m not allowed to do it. You wouldn’t die. Yet.”
“I still don’t want you to pick at my soul with your weird little fingers,” Atsumu hisses.
“Oh,” says Kiyoomi, a little sadly. He flexes his hands. “Shame. I should go.”
“Wait,” Atsumu says. “Will you come back?”
“Maybe.” Kiyoomi stands. “Maybe. Maybe, maybe. Will you die soon?”
“Maybe,” Atsumu replies. “It’s cute when you pout like that, you know.”
“I am leaving,” Kiyoomi hisses. “Die soon, please.”
One visit turns into two turns into three, five, fifteen, twenty.
“Why don’t your wings reflect light?” asks Atsumu, running his fingers gently over Kiyoomi’s feathers. “It’s weird.” They’re in a park; it’s sort of dark but sort of not. Atsumu calls it nine o’clock at night. Weird.
“Are they supposed to?” Kiyoomi asks, peering back at his wings.
“Unless they invented new physics, yeah.” Atsumu plucks off an inky black feather. It stings like a thousand suns burning. “For me, when you’re gone.”
“Fuck you,” Kiyoomi croaks. “I hate you. I don’t think we have physics or whatever Everywhere Else.” He pries Atsumu’s jaw open with one hand and plucks one of his molars out with the other. “For me,” he says, “when you’re gone.” The tooth is strange: oddly shaped and slightly yellow. Sharp.
“What the fuck?” Atsumu says, lisping around Kiyoomi’s fingers in his mouth. He bites down, but it doesn’t hurt.
“Look,” Kiyoomi says, “Look, look.” He pokes at Atsumu’s gums. “It’s back.”
Atsumu grabs Sakusa’s wrist and pushes his arm away. “You just pulled my fucking tooth out?” He pushes his tongue around his mouth and, unsurprisingly, finds a full set of teeth. “But it’s in your hand,” he says, “but also in my mouth?” He makes a sad, confused sort of face.
“Humans are so funny,” Kiyoomi says, putting the tooth in his pocket. “Why do you think there’s only one?”
“What the fuck does that mean,” Atsumu hisses, frowning. “Multiples? Of my tooth?”
Kiyoomi takes Atsumu’s head in his hands, inspecting all the bumps and lines of his face. “Why would there only be one? You have two eyes. Two teeth. Many teeth. Hundreds.”
“Man, I don’t get you at all,” Atsumu says dreamily. “Are you coming back tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Kiyoomi says, “possibly sooner if you die. Consider it.”
“Tempting,” Atsumu says, “but I won’t.”
“Haven’t seen much of you lately,” says Sugawara, smiling like a cherub. “I wonder where you’ve been.”
“I wonder,” Kiyoomi echoes. “I’ve been here and there.”
“I’m sure.” Sugawara pats his head. “You’re making memories, I suppose.”
“I suppose.”
“So you don’t remember anything about being human,” says Atsumu. He is watching television, curled up on the sofa. Kiyoomi lies on his stomach on the ground. Humans don’t consider wings when they make their furniture; chairs with backs are so uncomfortable.
“Not really,” Kiyoomi says. “I had a stray cat. There was a girl with curly hair like me.”
“Did she have moles?” Atsumu asks. “You have lots of moles.”
“No. Sugawara has a mole, and Shimizu.” He sighs. “Why do you ask?”
“I just like your moles,” Atsumu replies. He kicks at Kiyoomi’s shoulder. “And we’re coming back to Sugawara and Shimizu, who the fuck are they, but I was going to ask you something.”
“Okay,” Kiyoomi says, tracing the hardwood on the floor with his fingers. He wonders if Atsumu will be angry about the deep gouges his nails have left.
“If I asked you to kiss me,” Atsumu says quietly, “would you remember what that means?”
Kiyoomi sits up. “I know what kissing is, you freak. Do you think I’m stupid? I live on another plane of existence. I’m not dumb.”
Atsumu sighs dramatically. “Christ, Omi—”
“Omi?”
“Kiyoomi,” Atsumu says, “Omi. Nice and short.”
“Omi,” Kiyoomi repeats. “Omi, Omi. Acceptable.”
“Anyway,” Atsumu says pointedly, leaning forward, “I don’t know what you guys get up to. Maybe reapers don’t kiss.”
“I don’t kiss. Maybe the others do. Not where I can see.” Kiyoomi hums. “But I understand the concept.”
Atsumu deflates. “Okay, forget I—”
“Wait,” Kiyoomi interrupts. “Wait wait wait. I don’t kiss, I mean I don’t kiss them. You, maybe.” He holds his hands out. “Come down here.”
Atsumu scrambles back. “Fucking claws, Omi, be careful.” His eyes catch on something behind Kiyoomi. “Did you scratch my floor again?”
“No,” Kiyoomi lies. “Floors aren’t very important to my reality.”
“Yeah, but we’re in my reality.”
“Not my problem.”
“Yes, it fucking is.”
“Atsumu,” he says, “kiss.”
“Right,” Atsumu says. “Right right right.” He slithers off the couch and sits on the floor beside Kiyoomi. “Kiss.”
Kissing is nice, Kiyoomi thinks. Lips and tongues are not very important to his reality, but, well, they could be. If he wanted them to be, which he might. Atsumu takes Kiyoomi’s face in his hands and pulls away in favour of pressing their foreheads together.
“Omi,” he says, “what did you mean when you said it would cause problems for me if you put your wings through the wall in front of me?”
Kiyoomi presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I meant bad things would happen. Mind crumbling. Or bone crumbling. I get them mixed up. Is it important?”
“Cool,” Atsumu says, “cool cool cool, because your hand is currently, um, inside the floor, or something.”
“Ah.” Kiyoomi looks down to find that yes, his hand has sunk through the floor. “Floors aren’t very important to my reality. I must have gotten distracted.” He removes it and tries to solidify his body for Atsumu’s sake.
“Distracted,” Atsumu echoes, leering. “What do you mean by that?”
Kiyoomi feels his face go hot; how does that happen? Has Atsumu turned the heat on? “I don’t know,” he says. “I have to go. I will see you soon. Die soon, please.”
Except, it would be sad if Atsumu died. Once he passes a soul along, he isn’t quite sure where they go or how he might find one. It would be… unfortunate, if he couldn’t speak to Miya Atsumu anymore.
Hm.
“You didn’t reach your quota last week,” says Kenma when he hands Kiyoomi a familiar stack of papers. “For the first time ever.”
“I’m sorry.” Kiyoomi stares down at the floor. “It won’t happen again.”
“I don’t care,” Kenma says. “I just work here.”
Kiyoomi nods. “Okay.”
Reapers don’t sleep, really; there is no need to replenish your energy when you’re from Everywhere Else because it only exists in a certain sort of way. Still, Kiyoomi feels tired. Travelling to Earth and back is exhausting. The bags under his eyes are beginning to rival Kenma’s.
“Hey,” says Kuroo, loitering outside of Kenma’s office, “you look pretty dead, Sakusa.”
“Thanks,” he says. “Bye.”
“Wait. Can I talk to you for a second?”
Kiyoomi glares. “What?”
Kuroo looks around. “Follow me.” With that, he disappears into a room Kiyoomi hadn’t noticed until Kuroo walked into it.
“This is Miya Atsumu’s apartment,” Kiyoomi says, and it is: tiny television and grimy couch and gouges in the floor. Atsumu himself is missing; Kiyoomi doubts the apartment is real anyway.
“It is,” says Kuroo. “I’m not supposed to talk about how I became a reaper.”
“Okay?” Kiyoomi fiddles with the tooth in his pocket nervously.
“Kenma made me one,” Kuroo says, like it’s obvious. “I died, but he didn’t bring me to where we’re supposed to bring souls. He brought me to the front desk and asked if I could stay.”
“Oh.” Kiyoomi frowns. “Is that allowed?”
Kuroo laughs. “Obviously not, Sakusa. Anyway, they let me and they punished Kenma by making him take over the stupid desk job. ‘To discourage anyone else from doing the same’, they said, but Kenma likes this much better anyway.”
“This is very interesting and against the rules, but why are you telling me?” asks Kiyoomi. “We aren’t friends.”
“I thought you might be interested.” Kuroo gestures around the room. “You spend an awful lot of time here.”
“Maybe,” says Kiyoomi. “Maybe, maybe.”
Miya Atsumu, says Kiyoomi’s latest assignment in twelve-point Cambria. Brain aneurysm rupture.
“I thought those were rare,” says Sugawara, leaning over Kiyoomi’s shoulder. “And he’s what, thirty five? Maybe this’ll be it, Sakusa!”
“Maybe,” Kiyoomi echoes.
Sugawara pats him on the head. “Good luck.”
“Good luck,” Kiyoomi whispers.
The scene is familiar: Miya Atsumu lying in a hospital bed to the bittersweet soundtrack of his heart monitor flatlining. Nurses run and Miya Osamu cries. Kiyoomi waits five minutes, ten, just in case a miracle happens.
It does not.
Kiyoomi grabs Atsumu’s soul by the hair and yanks.
Usually he is more gentle; Atsumu doesn’t deserve this. Atsumu, quite a bit less opaque, says, “Jesus fuck, Omi, be a little nicer next time.”
“There is no next time,” Kiyoomi says flatly. “Whoops.”
Atsumu finally looks at his body lying on the bed. “Wow,” he says, “this is really it, huh?”
And then he bursts into fat, ugly tears.
Kiyoomi lets Atsumu cling to him as he sobs. He brings them out into the hallway so he doesn’t have to watch anyone handle his body; humans find that unpleasant, don’t they, Kiyoomi thinks.
“I know you are,” Kiyoomi pauses awkwardly, “sad right now. I am… sorry. But I have a solution.”
“To me dying?” Atsumu looks up at him, glaring through red, puffy eyes. “What?”
“You could be like me,” Kiyoomi explains. “A reaper. You would not be human, though. You would be like me.”
“Well,” Atsumu sniffles. “You’re pretty cool, I guess.”
“Is that a yes?”
Atsumu scoffs. “Of course it’s a yes.”
Kiyoomi tilts Atsumu’s chin this way and that, inspecting his face for a lie. “That was quick.”
“I’m not going to change my mind. Let’s go.”
With a sigh, Kiyoomi leads him up, up, up. “You’ll forget most of your life. Bits and pieces, maybe. I think you’ll remember me, but I’m not sure. You’ll know who I am, at least. Kuroo did.”
“I don’t know who Kuroo is,” Atsumu says. “Am I flying?”
“You’re dead,” Kiyoomi points out. “We’re in Everywhere Else. I’m taking you to the front desk.”
A sharp laugh punctuates Atsumu’s quiet crying. “The front desk?”
“Yes,” Kiyoomi says. “Kenma works there.”
“The front desk of Everywhere Else,” Atsumu whispers. “What the fuck.”
“Only the front desk for the reapers. If you try to go anywhere else in Everywhere Else you forget.” Kiyoomi takes Atsumu’s hand, careful to mind his claws, and leads him into the lobby. “Come on, we’re here. Are you sure about this? It’s permanent. Forever.”
Atsumu smiles. “Yeah, yeah, Omi. I got it. Forever’s fine as long as I got you.”
Kiyoomi sticks his tongue out. “Shut up.” With a sigh, he presses a kiss to Atsumu’s wet cheek. “Freak. Forever, with you. Acceptable.”
“Acceptable, is it?” Atsumu hisses. “I hope it’s more than—”
“Hello, Miya Atsumu,” says Kenma. “I’ve been expecting you.”