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Mahito sees with his hands first.
It's not that he doesn't experience the world with his other senses. Far from it. He has keen ears and sharp eyes that always watch, listen, wander. His nose picks up on viscera before it leaves a body, and he samples everything from stolen theater popcorn to chemicalled candies with a curious tongue. He can peer through a person and see the tremble of their lies. He can catch the scent of death before it descends, hungry as a fox.
But it's the impressions made through the press of his palms that stay locked in his mind the longest.
Thin paper, old and grainy. The wrinkled skin of the old man stocking shelves in a bookstore. Chewed gum, sticking and stretching between his fingertips. Sweat wiped off his forehead after an entertaining fight.
Other sensations also stick with him, clinging to his form like gossamer. The thrum of a train rolling over tracks, vibrating through the cement and past the soles of his shoes. His back, cradled in the rough netting of a hammock or by the plastic strips of a beach chair. Gritty sand, bumpy pavement, cool water. Crackling ice or fire, or the static spark of electricity between his thumb and the doorknob he reaches for.
"Oh," he muses, drawing his hand away from the knob.
Getou reaches out to push the door open instead, watching with placid amusement as Mahito shakes the shock off.
"You really generate a lot of static electricity, don't you?"
There's a smile in Getou's voice, as there often is.
Mahito hums and wanders through the gap in the doorway.
The hour is late. Inside the convenience store, there are rows of freshly restocked buns and sandwiches, with hardly a soul to admire the dedication of the employee caring about tidiness at half-past one. A lone, tired worker sits behind the counter where the hot foods are stored, colored bright by the orange-toned heating lamps.
When he presses his fingers against the glass, it's a strange mix of hot and cold. Hot on the other side, beneath the thin pane. Cold on his side, where the noisy heating system can't fully fight off the teeth of December.
"Getooou," he calls, voice carrying soundless through the store.
The cashier glances up - not at him or his phantom drawl, of course. They're giving Getou a reflexive look as he rustles through the yakisoba pan, freshly wrapped and laid in neat rows. The plastic reflects a glare from the florescent lights above, uncomfortably bright and cutting in the otherwise soft hour.
"Hm?"
"Buy some of the oden, okay? Make sure they don't skimp on the good stuff this time."
The last time that happened, with the cashier purposely fishing around the freshest tofu pouches, he'd reached over the counter in an impulsive fit of huffy irritation. The unpalatable human goo that splattered over their meal certainly made it less appetizing.
Judging by the brief show of exasperation behind Getou's smile, he recalls the incident, too. He answers with little more than that, though. It's harder to mask talking to "nothing" when you have an audience of one, as opposed to a bustling restaurant full of distracted people.
For now, Mahito is content to tap the glass once, turn on his heel, and wander down the first aisle he sees. His fingers trail along the contents of the shelves as he goes. Smooth chocolate bars. Crinkling bags of crisps. The sticky film covering wrapped dango. Under the sickly buzzing of the lights overhead, between the blackness pressed close against glass windows and doors, he feels strangely off-center.
"Getou," he calls out again, not waiting for even a hum before continuing. "Did you know? There's a word for it - for why places feel so different at night."
He read it recently, some scrap in an article he'd come across. One of many bits of trivia he's collected from books or the internet, pads of his fingers constantly swiping against cool plexiglass or flipping through inky papers that leave smears of black and grey behind. He rubs his fingers together on reflex, thinking about the way the grooves of his fingerprints catch against texture.
"Liminal something-or-other. There are other places like it, too! Not just grocery stores after dark. It's things like airports when no one is around, or empty diners on the edge of the highway."
He turns the corner and peers down the next aisle, finding nothing particularly bright or eye-catching to pull him that way. He taps against a protruding corner of metal; then, a weaved basket holding day-old goods, half off. It scratches lightly against his skin.
"But, you know? Almost all of those places have one thing in common. It's that there aren't any humans when people think there should be."
By the time his navel-gazing has meandered this far, his feet have carried over to the refrigerated wall that Getou still stands by. It's a curious thing. He wonders if a dead body even needs to eat, or if this strange sorcerer simply chooses to do so for the sake of having something nice to taste, something solid to bite down into.
He chooses to save the question for another time, or never, depending on the strike of the whim.
"What do you think?"
Getou finally spares him a glance, and Mahito always delights in it when he does. There's something about it - about the way his eyes will bore in and through and out again, as though he too can see the shape of a soul. Not for the first time, Mahito wonders what Getou makes of his.
"What do I think about what?" Getou responds with a question of his own.
He's always indulgent in a nearly self-satisfied way, like he knows the answer to any question posed already, but is willing to let Mahito push and pull and needle anyway. To a degree. It's always delicate, between the two of them. A careful dance. Use and be used; balancing on a saw's edge as it teeters back and forth, cutting away at nothing.
Mahito shifts his weight, balancing on his heels. He examines the sterile plastic wrappers with a muted interest, feels the tug of rough woven fabric against his fingers as he slides his hands into his pockets.
"After we get rid of the humans, do you think the entire world will feel liminal? Or will that whole concept lose its charm once it's not special anymore?"
An aimless question. Most of them are. He burns the air between them with little games of what-ifs, weaving a tapestry of amusement, speaking to the hatred he holds for the humanity that gave him shape. He's asked stranger ones before, when cutting his thumb on the edge of paper money or rubbing the shiny silver dog he'd selected for his Monopoly piece. The groove of its tail left a dent in his hand when he once asked, 'Getou, how far ahead do you plan in your games, anyway?'
Getou hums, smile fading just a little. Contemplation, maybe? Some form of interest? Reflex more than any deep emotion, he's sure. Getou's expressions shift and form in the way one would expect of a human, most times, but there's something in it that's inorganic.
He often wants to reach out and hold it while it moves. To feel the stretch and pull of muscle beneath the layers of fat and flesh. To understand what a lie in motion feels like, when the soul itself refuses to tremble, to bend, to give him anything at all. Getou always refuses to give and Mahito refuses to fight his innate urge to take, to dig his fingers all the way in and let go only when satisfied.
He is a terribly greedy creature, undeniably. Like a kudzu vine, he grasps and strangles, steals and clutches, pushing everything else down and down and dead as he climbs ever higher.
"Who can say?" Getou's response is punctuated by the rustle of plastic as he dumps his selected item - he'd opted for a salmon croquette sandwich in the end, apparently - into his small hand basket. "There's never been a time when so few humans have been around."
Mahito can feel his lower lip jut out, petulance taking hold.
"You always say things like that," he whines. "When will you give me a real answer? Really think about things first! I want to hear what you have to say."
Getou just laughs and turns to head back toward the cashier.
There's a split-second where Mahito's hands itch to reach out and grab his arm as he walks by, but he can always sense Getou's guard. The way he never fully turns his back if he can help it, and how attuned he is when he can't. The careful weight of his gait. The way he holds his basket. He is not in danger around Mahito, wolf that he is, but he takes care all the same.
Mahito scuffs the sole of his shoe against the linoleum floor, enjoying the feel of its drag, before he turns to catch up.
In the few minutes he wandered, Getou had picked up a few other things. There's the sandwich with its stark white bread, and a few bottles of something-or-others filled with electrolytes. As he places the basket on the counter, Mahito spots something pink and reaches out with delight to run his finger along the sharp, crimped edge. It's some sort of candy, he thinks. Something strawberry, maybe - it's too out of season to be seeing sakura-flavored things just yet.
"Can I have one?"
"If you want."
As a curse, Mahito doesn't have to eat. Still, he enjoys the novelty of it and likes to taste new things. This seems enough to pacify his huffiness, and he's beaming as he reaches out to pat the glass again.
"Don't forget the oden."
Always reaching out for one thing more, one thing more--
"Excuse the trouble, but could you add an oden to that order?"
The cashier nods politely and sets about fishing out a serving from the hot broth, which fogs up the glass in front of it. Mahito watches with a hungry delight, though the hunger certainly isn't for the fishcakes being nestled into their styrofoam cup.
It's reflex, as it so often is. The bag moves from behind the counter, and a hand holds the bag, and Mahito reaches out to grab the wrist of that hand. It's not as though humans feel him in the moments before he twists flesh into knots and makes ribbons of sinew. They can't, but he can feel it all.
A pulse of heat. The sturdiness of bone. Soft hair - peach fuzz. The cool line of a bracelet. Blood as it bubbles through rubbery, tough veins. The squirm of a soul, tucked down and unnoticed, like a centipede beneath a rock.
Ugly, unseen things, both he and the soul.
He can feel Getou's gaze against the back of his neck, sturdy as ever. It lacks any sort of judgment and any sort of warning. At times, he feels like he's the one under observation. An alien species, set for dissection when its lab technician grows bored, or when he runs out of use at long, long last.
With a sigh, he releases his grasp. The cashier passes their food over, takes the tray with the money and bows. It tastes sour on the back of his tongue - the arrogance of humanity, who never seems to understand how close they are to extinction.
His palms itch again, so he turns on his heel and walks toward the door.
"I just don't want to ruin that batch," he explains, though Getou never asks. "Since that human actually gave us some good pieces this time."
Getou laughs. It feels a little less inorganic, he thinks.
"Let's get these good pieces back before they start getting soggy, then."
He sweeps forward without pause as Mahito steps to the side, letting him deal with the knob this time. His palm makes contact without any unpleasant zaps. The door gives way to him, and Mahito stubbornly waits until Getou lets the it go so he can place his palm against the exact same spot.
There's some warmth left behind, and it doesn't shock him this time, which makes him grin. He follows Getou back out into the chill.
"Give me a piece of that candy, first!"
As usual, Getou indulges his least bothersome whims, rummaging through his bag to withdraw the brightly colored package. Their fingers don't come close to touching as he passes it over, but Mahito thinks about it, anyway. About the trivial human quirks in the lines of a hand, or the heat and sweat that gathers in its cradle. About callouses, soft edges, and cleanly filed nails.
It's similar to the way he can taste the acrid sweetness of strawberries before he untwists the plastic, ridges digging gently into his skin. With Geto's artificially-seated soul nearby, he can almost ignore the crinkling bag and visualize the shape of it instead, sturdy and tall in the net of his fingers.
He sees with his hands first, after all. Reality begins and ends in his palm, and the night stretches out beautifully before them, catching the echo of their footsteps in the in-between hours they inhabit.