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The day Shigeo dies, in a solar flare of a fight, isn’t the worst day of his life. Not by a long shot. There’s light, an alien pulse of energy shot straight to his chest, to his beating heart, and then nothingness.
The aftermath is rough. He thinks his head must still hurt from the fight, which he doesn’t remember winning or losing; it isn’t until he notices he’s in a crematorium that he realizes the real reason for his headache.
That he has a body at all is pretty remarkable. To reconstitute from ashes and spirit alone. He always surprises himself.
Also, he’s lucky it’s nighttime, the staff all gone home. “Well,” he says to his naked self, to the deep reservoirs of power under the surface of his skin, the thing in the mirror that he mostly imagines by now is just Kageyama Shigeo, “I don’t think I know how to make clothes,” as if he ever really knew how to fight, save the world, come back from the dead. As if these things don’t just happen sometimes, whether he wants them to or not.
-
A week later, at his apartment, there is no dust on the furniture, no stiffness to his linens: everything just where he left it. The natto he made and froze before he died should still be good. He pulls it down to the counter and cheats, using his power to warm it just enough for the microwave. He sits down at his small dining table when there’s a knock at his fire escape. He looks up and beckons the silhouette inside: Dimple, in his usual meat suit, steps in and slides the glass pane shut behind him.
“Yo,” Dimple says. “You look well.”
There’s nothing Shigeo can read easily in his face. Shigeo pushes at his natto with his chopsticks. “Hey.”
“You know,” Dimple says as he picks his way across the apartment, “humans always want to know how their loved ones will react when they pass. Who screams or cries the loudest. But relative to how many humans there actually are in the world, very few of them have enough will to become ghosts and see for themselves.” He grins, all teeth. “You went above and beyond, as always.”
Shigeo makes a neutral sound. “Everyone’s pretty upset,” he says. “I think it’s a good idea to ... give them some space.” Let them sit with the old grief, the new shock. The confusion of being able to dispense with black suits and despair.
“The only things that ever truly come back from the dead are gods,” Dimple says.
“Dimple,” Shigeo says tiredly, “enough.”
“If anyone knew what really happened, it’d be the Psycho Helmet crap all over again but a million times worse. They’d put a statue of you where your grave should’ve been.”
“You know I don’t want any of that.”
Dimple keeps going, though. “I might still do something about it,” he drawls. “There are rumors, after that fight ... I could build a temple. Get some followers.”
“Dimple—”
Dimple pushes Shigeo’s chair sideways with the pointed toe of one shoe, grabbing his wrist so he drops the chopsticks.
“Make them pay homage to your miracle,” Dimple says, sinking to one knee and then both. “Pay respects to the divine.”
There’s a strange light in his expression that Shigeo doesn’t know how to read. He doesn’t have long to try anyway: Dimple shuts his eyes, drawing Shigeo’s hand to his face and nosing over the heel of his palm. Over his pulse.
“I couldn’t sense you, when it happened,” Dimple says, quiet against the thin skin of his wrist. “Most people stick around till funeral rites. But it felt like you snuffed out instantly.”
Shigeo says reluctantly, “It probably has something to do with how I was able to come back. But it doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters. What if you don’t come back next time?”
“Then you’ll bury me. You and the others.”
“Shigeo.”
“I heard you didn’t come to my funeral. Some friend you are.”
“I was looking for you, dumbass.”
“Oh? You must have had a strong desire to see me again.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s kind of funny.” Shigeo cups his face, familiar and yet unknown. This is the shape of Dimple’s love: possessing a living body to greet his own born-again living body, like bringing a bottle of good sake to dinner. He bends his head close to seek out the distant green light in the vessel’s eyes, like a blinking radio tower, but Dimple doesn’t meet him halfway. “Don’t call me a god again. I’m a man.” He pinches Dimple’s cheek. “Like this.”
The place where Dimple’s face is pressed against Shigeo’s jeans is faintly damp. “Sure. Whatever.”
“You want me to prove it to you?”
“Maybe a little,” Dimple says darkly—then he yelps as Shigeo rises, stumbling back on his ass and watching dumbstruck as Shigeo starts crossing the apartment to his own bedroom. Shigeo pulls his shirt off too, gratified at the choked sound behind him. It feels good to surprise someone in a different way, Shigeo thinks in a moment of private amusement: with heat, skin, personhood. Not so holy after all.
“Are you coming?” he says, and Dimple actually cackles—the first laugh Shigeo’s heard since he died—and follows, more delighted than devout.