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Running around Mount Mitake hoping to solve a missing persons case is an activity Satoru hopes to never repeat. Maybe if he could actually slow down and enjoy the sights, he wouldn’t mind the summer heat. But Satoru’s backtracking along the trail he’s already hiked once, and he feels like he’s wasted hours without accomplishing anything.
On his first pass, he tried a dowsing pendulum, and it certainly took him to some pretty neat spots, but the two groups of university students last seen on this mountain two days ago remained lost. This time, Satoru uses a charmed compass, and it seems to be leading him back along the loop of the trail.
If the compass doesn’t pan out, it’ll lose its magic and Satoru will have to improvise. Which would ordinarily be fine—his favourite kind of assignment, even—but he has a deadline. There’s another case, in the city, that involves a big law firm with ties to the clans. Satoru’s technically meant to be working on it, but it’s early stages, so he dumped the legwork on Nanami and hid on a mountain.
Nanami probably needs a distraction after the whole mess with Haibara. And Satoru isn’t really hiding. He’s multitasking. Making the most of his limited time on this earth.
If this happens to coincide with Suguru briefly visiting Tokyo between missions, it’s hardly Satoru’s fault.
He hasn’t been avoiding Suguru, exactly. They see each other at least once a week, sometimes briefly, sometimes not. It’s Suguru who’s been pulling back, keeping to himself and refusing to talk about what’s bothering him. Initially, Satoru thought Suguru was having a hard time dealing with Haibara’s death, but it’s been months now, and Suguru seems more distant than ever.
He acts like nothing’s changed. He still lets Satoru in close, suggests outings, laughs and jokes and makes mean comments. But his aura hasn’t been the same since they identified Haibara’s body. Suguru hasn’t been the same. Sometimes, it feels like Satoru’s the only one who can tell, and he can’t help but doubt himself, just a little. But then he’ll catch Suguru radiating politeness towards a victim or a client, while his aura drips green, slimy disgust.
Usually, it’s deserved. Satoru is often—maybe not disgusted by the people they help, but he definitely doesn’t think highly of most of them. He tends not to think about them much at all. Suguru, though, used to be different. He used to wear his copper and gold kindness like a suit of armour, just shiny enough to irritate Satoru’s eyes and make him grumble.
That hasn’t happened in a year, and Satoru can’t decide if the change is good or bad. If he should be concerned. Because Suguru is Suguru no matter what. If something broke in him with Riko’s death, and then again with Haibara’s, then Satoru wants to learn how to handle the jagged edges. It’s Suguru who won’t let him.
Sure, he still lets Satoru cuddle with Dragon, a literal part of Suguru’s soul, exposing his true feelings for Satoru’s viewing pleasure. He’s not dishonest, but he avoids topics that, frankly, Satoru would also prefer not to touch. And maybe the discomfort of having this thing hanging between them is getting to him.
But it’s fine! They’ll be fine. Time is on their side, probably, and the shudders of premonition, the cold tingling in the tips of Satoru’s fingers and the inexplicable wetness of his eyes are all coincidental.
So it’s absolutely not an issue when Suguru’s ringtone begins blasting from Satoru’s pocket, dispelling the muggy stillness of the mountain by frightening a bunch of birds. Satoru doesn’t falter in his step. He filters unwanted emotions out through his bond with Six and picks up.
“Yaga’s got another case for you, so don’t pick up when he calls.” Suguru’s voice is resigned, like he knows exactly how Satoru is going to respond.
Satoru laughs. “What, you think I can’t handle a little more work?”
“I think you’re on a mountain in this heat and without backup.”
“I don’t need backup. It sucks that it’s hot, but I’ll be fine.” He will. Satoru’s got enough charms on him that, while the summer sun causes him some discomfort, he’s safe from heatstroke and dehydration. He probably won’t even get sunburnt.
Suguru takes a while to pick his next words. “Yeah. You always are.”
He sounds like he’s lying. Suguru only ever tells straight-up lies on the phone, or at least Satoru thinks so. Hopes so. If he can’t even tell, what kind of friend is he?
He needs to move on from this topic. “What’s the case?”
“Something about a dog. Hold on.” There’s the sound of papers being shuffled. “There’ve been sightings of a large black dog, and people walking alone at night got mauled, some to death. But the dog hasn’t been found.” Suguru huffs. “Someone read Arthur Conan Doyle, maybe.”
“A cursed dog, then?”
“Or the dog’s a distraction and the curse’s real anchor is something else.” Suguru pauses. “I’m here until tomorrow morning. I’ll look into it for you.”
Satoru is about to roll his eyes, but the forest green magic around the compass pulses, then strains in the direction the needle now points to: off the trail and down a steep, rocky ravine that widens towards Nayano Falls. Tall conifers rise up all around, silently watchful.
“I can handle a dog curse,” Satoru mutters, distracted. He crouches at the point where the compass wants him to go off trail and pushes his glasses up to his forehead.
Partially translucent, yellow-brown magic cascades down the ravine like thick sludge. It splashes up against the trees, clings to their bark, and settles a cloak of strange, hushed silence in the area. Satoru wonders how he didn’t notice it on his first pass through here.
“You aren’t here to handle it, though, are you?” Suguru sounds annoyed now. “I’m helping whether you want me to or not. You can’t stop me.”
“Uh-huh. Whatever. I gotta go.”
“Wait. Send me your current location.”
Satoru hums, not really listening, and ends the call. The trail hugs the ravine’s edge for a couple hundred metres, so Satoru backtracks for a bit on flat ground, then takes a nearly vertical path down, the charms on his person allowing him to easily keep his footing among the loose rock, fallen branches, and scraggly shrubs.
He reaches the edge of the sickly yellow river and doesn’t hesitate. His talent blows a clear path for him through the magic. Satoru absentmindedly divides the sludge into nothing as he goes. He doesn’t enjoy the thought of some new group of hapless hikers falling prey to the curse, and tumbling down the ravine with him in it.
It doesn’t take long to find the heart of the problem. The smell of rotting bodies engulfs Satoru unexpectedly, makes him gag. He pushes through it, hand over the lower half of his face, and steps between the last few trees keeping vigil over the carnage.
Fungi bloom across the mound of corpses like it’s a macabre flower bed. They grow out of open mouths and hollowed eye sockets, cascade down flung-out arms, clothe the bodies in frills. Mycology is not Satoru’s area of expertise, but he thinks that the sheer variation among the mushrooms—in colour and shape, from round, red caps to vivid yellow ruffles and white, lacy, hollow domes—means these are not corpse finders. At least not all of them. It’s an unnatural arrangement.
The bodies look wrong, too. They’re bloated, limbs sticking out at odd angles, like the dead students are searching for a last embrace, but otherwise, the fragments of skin Satoru can see are unblemished. There are no maggots, no insects flying around, and no sign of animals having fed on the corpses.
The whole thing gives Satoru the impression of a carefully wrapped gift. A love letter between highly disturbed witches, maybe. Likely, the curse’s anchor is somewhere in that pile, and Satoru really doesn’t want to be the one to reach in for it. He’d have to wear death on his skin all the way back to the village—half an hour away once he gets back on the trail—and get a hotel room just to wash it off. He didn’t bring a change of clothes. He—
He could report this to Yaga and let the Council handle the cleanup. But what if they send someone weak and inexperienced? This curse is obviously advanced. Satoru missed it on the first try.
He doesn’t want to do it. There’s no one else who can do it.
Suguru could, or even Nanami, but like hell is Satoru going to make them. After taking a few pictures and sending Yaga the location, he puts away his phone and compass, since he won’t be touching them for a while unless he can keep one of his hands clean. He walks a small distance away, eats an energy bar without tasting it, and drinks most of a water bottle. He takes a leak. Finally, he’s out of excuses.
Satoru crouches by the corpse pile, closes his eyes, and sticks his hand in there blindly. He tries not to think about what he’s touching. The warm, slimy skin stretched taut over bloated flesh makes him gag. Disturbing the corpses releases more of the stench, so Satoru holds his breath. The moment feels endless. Satoru leans closer and closer, trembling at the thought that he might need to push his entire arm in. His jaw is clenched so tight it hurts.
Finally, his fingers snag on something hard and pointy. He gasps, grips it tight, and pulls with enough force that he lands on his ass. His arm is covered in—he tries not to think about it. In his hand is a deer’s antler, with bits of soft velvet still stuck to it.
Fuck. He doesn’t have anything he could use to break it.
He drops it on the ground for now. He’s constantly repelling the curse’s magic, but touching the anchor still makes him uncomfortable. The easiest way to destroy it would be to burn it, but Satoru doesn’t carry a lighter, or anything flammable. He could try to crush it with a rock, just hit it until it falls apart. It would probably work, but it would be slow and sloppy. Antlers are made of strong stuff.
If Suguru were here, he could just absorb the curse. Pull it right out of the anchor and store it in his body like an insane person. It’s a cool ability and the only area in which he has Satoru beat.
He probably wouldn’t want to absorb this one. Or maybe? It could be useful for getting rid of a corpse, if Suguru ended up killing someone one day. But it must taste absolutely vile. Satoru asked once, and Suguru, begrudgingly, told him that curses are like a full course meal, while raw magic is like the ingredients. Only the meal is made of dirt and vomit.
Thinking about vomit is a bad idea, it turns out. Satoru waits out the wave of nausea, searching his mind for any helpful information about destroying anchors. He really doesn’t want to carry this thing back with him.
Anchors, like the name suggests, are the element that holds a curse together, allowing it to take effect over a period of time. Some anchors channel the magic as it flows through them, some hold it still, determining what area will be affected. Creating a good anchor takes a lot of skill. It’s too easy to pick an object or place that can be symbolically destroyed or altered, which is just as good as breaking it for real, and—
Satoru has it. He grins as the idea jolts through him. It’s a killing curse, but its goal is to create a bouquet of bodies, exposed for viewing. The anchor is dead tissue.
Lacking better tools, Satoru uses the antler to dig up a shallow hole. The soil is soft here, untrodden, but so full of rocks that the process takes a while and leaves Satoru’s arm sore. He buries the antler with as much ceremony as he can muster. He thinks about Riko, makes himself feel something about her death, and spreads it like a fuzzy grey blanket over the makeshift grave.
The anchor’s release is a ripple across Satoru’s senses, briefly dizzying. He stays crouched, small rocks digging into his knee, right arm held away from his body, and waits. Sweat trickles down his back. And then, a fly buzzes past his ear, quickly followed by another.
It’s frightening, almost, how quickly they arrive, more and more by the second. The noise feels like it’s burrowing into Satoru’s skull. He staggers away, digging out his phone with his clean left hand to update Yaga and shoot a quick text to Suguru.
done with curse. omw back
He just needs to get to the village first, and take a long, hot shower. It’s not so bad if, instead of thinking about the state of his arm, he focuses on what body cleansers and clothes he wants to buy. Maybe they sell handmade soap in the village. It’s always fun to try something new.
By the time Satoru makes it back to Tokyo, Suguru has the dog contained—that is, sporting a new set of collar and leash in pastel pink, and sitting quietly by Suguru’s leg, panting in the heat.
“This is not a big dog,” Satoru comments, lowering his glasses to take a better look.
It’s a bit larger than a husky, with a short black coat and expressive, dark brown eyes. Its tail swishes gently against the ground. Blood red strings of magic cling to it, forming an uneven lattice and dragging behind the dog until they fade out of view. Another leash, of sorts.
“She’s a girl,” Suguru informs him. Like Satoru, he’s dressed in a threadbare shirt and shorts, his hair gathered into a bun. “I gave her food and water. No vet check for obvious reasons, but she couldn’t have been out in the streets longer than twelve hours.” He smirks. “And she’s all yours. Go on, I know you wanna.”
Satoru grins, all of his attention on the dog. When Suguru shifts his weight, she takes it as her signal to move and bump her soft, wet nose against Satoru’s knee. He coos and leans down to pet her behind both ears. She takes it with grace and more gentle swishing of her tail.
“She’s so friendly,” Satoru marvels. “Aren’t you? Yeah you are, Princess.”
“Don’t give her a name,” Suguru says. He sounds pained. “She’s both the curse’s targeting mechanism and the anchor , Satoru.”
Obviously, Satoru wants to snark, but the word sticks in his throat on the way up. It’s not fair that someone used such a gentle creature like this.
“So suck the curse out of her,” Satoru tries, already knowing it’s pointless. Suguru would already have done that if he could.
“I tried. She started having a seizure. It could be done the slow way, ritualistically, but there’s not enough time left. And the likelihood that the ritual would kill Princess anyway is high.”
“I could keep her,” Satoru says, immediately enamoured with the idea. “She can’t hurt me, I’d just have to…”
He’d have to completely isolate her from non-witches, and most weaker witches, too, for that matter. With his schedule, that means she’d have to spend the majority of her life alone in a cage somewhere.
“You could keep her,” Satoru amends, staring up at Suguru, trying to go with the wide eyed, pitiful look that usually gets Satoru what he wants.
Suguru shakes his head. “My workload is as bad as yours. You know this.”
“So we try the ritual,” Satoru says. He brings his face close to Princess’ head for a whiff of that clean dog smell, and she lets him, unbothered. “She’s so easy to handle. We can stall for a couple of days. My schedule’s full, but—”
“Some of the surviving victims don’t have faces any more,” Suguru interrupts him. He waits for Satoru to meet his eyes. “Anyone who saw her yesterday and got scared ended up with injuries comparable to being mauled by a bear. It happened the moment the sun set. I found Princess around noon, and got her here fast, but…”
There’s no telling how many people she frightened today, and no quick way to find them. It explains why they’re in the spare workshop at Yaga’s place. The space is rarely used for anything, unless the primary workshop gets contaminated. There’s only one window, covered by a blind.
Satoru looks back down and into Princess’ pretty, trusting eyes. She sits, trying to see if that behaviour will get her more pets. Satoru caves immediately.
“I’ll do it,” Suguru offers, voice gentle. “You should be heading out anyway. I just hoped you’d see something I couldn’t, or… I don’t know.”
Satoru is always at his best—most focused, most reckless—when it’s only him between something good and its imminent destruction. But he can’t see a way out of this one. Some kind of containment spell, maybe, to cut the curse off from its anchor, but that’s no guarantee for the victims. Too much depends on how the curse is constructed.
“You found the witch who did this?”
Suguru’s aura slowly fills with rust red anger, here and there bubbling darker with resentment. “Yeah. It’s a Kamo reject, which means that they get to hold and interrogate him.”
Satoru closes his eyes, focusing on the soft fur under his fingers. If he were head of the Gojo clan, maybe he could pressure the Kamo clan into letting him talk to their prisoner. Since he isn’t, there’s no way his clan will risk offending their equals over a dog.
Princess steps closer to him, head tilted up to press her chin to his stomach. Satoru smiles down at her. “You’re such a good girl.”
“I’m half-tempted to grab her and run,” Suguru says, laughing a little. His aura fades from red to ash grey fatigue. “Let the Council handle the fallout. And I don’t even like dogs that much.”
“You have time off until tomorrow, right?” Satoru waits for Suguru to nod. “Take care of her? Take her to a park and let her run or something, give her treats. At least we can make her last few hours good. I’ll handle it after that.”
“No, I’ll do it. I’ll take her to a vet and try to absorb the curse. The seizure looked bad, but maybe…” He shrugs. He looks down at Princess, who notices and wags her tail. “I guess you’re my date for the afternoon, Your Highness.”
Satoru very badly wants to kiss him. He shoves the feeling onto his familiar, hopefully clearing his aura of any incriminating flavours. “I’ll deal with the law firm thing quick and join you.”
“I don’t know Satoru.” Suguru’s eyes crinkle as he smiles. “Princess and I don’t need a third wheel.”
Satoru sticks his tongue out, ruffles Princess’ ears one last time, and heads out, grabbing the thick stack of case files Yaga hands him. All he needs to do is figure out why a bunch of lawyers are getting bone cancer. Easy peasy.
The law firm takes up an entire mid-size office building, the sort that might be described as playful in an architecture magazine. Shoko meets Satoru at the reception desk. She has dark circles under her eyes, and looks twitchy in that way she gets when she hasn’t been able to smoke for a while.
She offers Satoru a lazy salute. “Finally. You caught up on the case?”
He is, having skimmed the files on the drive here, covering the entire backseat in paper and X-ray photos (and leaving it there for the driver to clean up). Over the last two or three months, all of the people employed at the law firm have mysteriously developed osteosarcoma. Since the firm has represented the clans in the past and done so successfully, the Council was quick to throw the case at Satoru with instructions not to spare any effort in solving it.
“Didn’t know bone cancer could be kinda pretty on X-rays,” Satoru says. He slips his glasses into a pocket and looks around. “Is this place empty?”
Shoko shakes her head. “No, they’re just all upstairs, working. Apparently the justice system waits for no one, even if the person in question might be dying.”
“The report said it’s not that bad.”
“It isn’t. Most of their prognoses are good. And I’m here, so.”
Shoko leads the way to the elevator, beginning their long trek through trendy office space. They interview and examine a sample of the victims. After the twelfth pointless conversation, Satoru calls for a strategy meeting. He and Shoko are given free use of a spacious conference room.
“What do you think?” Shoko asks, humming in satisfaction as she settles in one of the fancy chairs.
Satoru drops into another and gives himself a spin as he thinks. The curse looks like uneven growths sprouting from the victims’ aura, shaped much like what Satoru saw in the X-rays. The magic is the colour of bone and feels weirdly chalky when it brushes up against Satoru’s aura. What’s more concerning is that the same kind of magic permeates the walls, floors and ceilings of the whole building, barely visible.
“The building’s the anchor,” Satoru says, still spinning slowly. “Like Nanami thought.”
Nanami’s research was thorough, though he only had this morning and most of yesterday to complete it. He found no evidence of similar patients outside of the law firm. He also compiled a long list of people who have been harmed either directly or indirectly by the firm’s activities. Luckily, none of the people listed are Council-affiliated witches—that would have been a political nightmare. Unluckily, none of the people listed are known to be witches.
It’s not unusual for a case to end with untangling a curse or a troublesome charm, rather than finding and arresting the witch responsible. Witches can be incredibly difficult to pin down, even with the Gojo clan’s arsenal of divination rituals (partially because the current clan head refuses to waste valuable resources). So, the easiest solution is to have the building demolished.
Shoko swears. “The law firm better not learn of this. Council witches participated in the construction of this thing. It was supposed to be charmed against any kind of magical interference.”
“And it is,” Satoru says, frowning. “The curse uses a loophole. The protective charms were meant to keep the firm’s business and clients safe, not the staff or the building itself. In fact, the charms probably make this curse more powerful by excluding all these other options.”
“Yeah, and if the media get wind of this, we will all be in deep shit.” Shoko points a stern finger at him. “You know what stands between witches and a witch hunt? For you it may be generational wealth and power, but for the average witch it’s only the Council.”
Satoru scrunches his nose in confusion. “Why do you sound like Yaga?”
“Because I had to sit through his lecture today, and I’m sharing my suffering with you,” she explains through a widening grin. She pulls two lollipops from a pocket, throws one at Satoru and begins unwrapping the other. “Personally I don’t think it’s that serious. Who’s gonna get all up in arms over a bunch of bloodthirsty lawyers? But it is serious for Yaga, so.”
Their teacher is, unfortunately, on the Council’s list of witches with the potential to cause political upheaval. In other words, Yaga needs to toe the line or he risks getting disappeared. Managing his apprentices seems to be part of the deal.
Satoru makes a dismissive gesture. “Bet I could take the blame for it if I acted really obnoxious,” he says around his lollipop. The cheap artificial cherry flavour disappoints, but Satoru hasn’t had time for lunch, so he’ll take it.
“Bet you could,” Shoko agrees, “this time. But what happens next time, and the one after that? At least no one’s actively dying here. You can take your time with this curse.”
False, Satoru wants to exclaim. Negative points. Multiple someones are for sure actively dying from magical trouble that Satoru could easily solve, while he’s stuck here saving a building. Shoko knows this better than anyone, though.
“I can’t,” Satoru declares. “I have a date with Princess to get to.”
Buoyed by the look on Shoko’s face, he grabs pen and paper to doodle on as he thinks through the problem. He has the building with all the victims inside to work with, which is helpful. It looks like the magic is getting channelled through the concrete, which makes some sense—the walls and floors are comparable to a skeleton. So, what would one have to do to place a curse like this?
If Satoru wanted to do it, he’d find or commission a model of the building, use it as an anchor, and hide it somewhere. Could he do it like that, then transplant the anchoring point between the model and the real deal? Maybe, with his talent. It’s possible that the witch in question has a talent that would allow them to do it easily.
It shouldn’t be too difficult to reverse the process.
“We could get Geto here and see if he wants to absorb this one,” Shoko suggests.
Satoru shakes his head. “It’s too big a curse, and anyway, the building might not survive so much magic being ripped out of it.”
“We’ll tell him to be gentle. He’s got the afternoon off, lucky bastard, why not take advantage?”
So many reasons. Time off is a rare luxury and should be respected. Satoru already kind of fucked that up by leaving Princess with Suguru, but spending time with friendly animals is supposed to be therapeutic, so it’s probably fine. More importantly, Suguru’s been distant and weird, and maybe he needs some time to himself to sort through stuff.
“You insinuating that I can’t handle this curse on my own is really hurting my feelings, Shoko.” Satoru grabs his phone and dials Yaga. “Hey, sensei. Can you get in touch with the architect who designed this building? I could really use a model and maybe they have something. The more detailed, the better.”
Shoko keeps her thoughts to herself as Satoru coordinates with Yaga and gets his hands on a small version of the building. It becomes the centrepiece of the conference room. Shoko contributes by hanging up IV bags on the walls, stretching the lines and attaching them to the model. Satoru makes her wait outside after that.
“Take these.” He hands Shoko his glasses, his phone, his charms. “I'm gonna be stripping the magic off of anything in the building. They might get ruined.”
He’s decided that brute force—applied carefully—is the way to go. If he wanted to do this by the book, with a proper ritual to filter out only the curse’s magic, he’d need the conscious participation of the staff, and just explaining things to the lot of them would take all night. It’s already too late in the evening for Satoru’s comfort.
Shoko accepts everything but the phone. “I feel like removing our only line of communication is a shit idea.” At Satoru’s scowl, she sighs. “I’ll give you my phone, then, okay? I don’t give a damn about the charms.”
Satoru has nothing against breaking Shoko’s things. The moment he’s in the elevator and therefore out of Shoko’s sight, he opens her image gallery to snoop. He’ll stop the second he sees something that’s really not for him, but he bets that most of what Shoko has in there are photos of food from her outings with Utahime.
He’s only sort of right. There are shots of restaurant food, but they’re not the majority. Shoko apparently takes a lot of selfies with Utahime, usually with some notable location in the background. Tourist attractions, karaoke bars, concert stages. She also takes candids of people she knows without asking for permission.
People like Satoru, more often than not accompanied by Suguru. Satoru looks through the photos as he makes his way back to the conference room. They aren’t shocking, exactly—he’s in them, he knows where and when most of them were taken—but they do put things into perspective. Satoru had no idea the two of them were so obvious to outsiders.
It’s in the way Suguru’s hand, curled over Satoru’s shoulder, looks so gentle. How they lean closer to each other, shoulders curled inward as though to keep the rest of the world out. Without the distraction of Suguru’s aura, it’s much easier to notice the way he looks at Satoru in almost every photograph. Fond. Maybe even adoring.
In the most recent photos, he doesn’t look at Satoru at all. They don’t share personal space, they don’t touch. It’s only a blink in the history of their friendship, a temporary setback, but seeing it documented makes Satoru’s throat close up.
With a shaky exhale, he exits Shoko’s gallery. He allows himself to imagine finishing up here, then meeting Suguru and Princess in a park somewhere. Satoru would take Suguru’s hand and tell him—he’s not sure what. Something true, obviously, but there are so many things left unsaid between them, he doesn’t know where to start.
With the obvious thing, maybe. If the romance genre is to be believed, it just might be enough to get him and Suguru through all the other stuff.
Satoru shakes himself free of the thoughts when he steps into the conference room. He climbs onto the table to sit cross-legged in front of the model, and sets Shoko’s phone down beside himself. He closes his eyes to better focus his senses on the outer edges of the building. Then, slowly, he pulls all the magic towards himself, condensing it until it fits in the conference room.
Satoru watches the different colours and shapes twist and slither around each other, squeezed into such a limited space. It takes effort holding them here, especially since Satoru also has to keep magic from outside from entering the building. People continue going about their day in the offices all around him, their auras shedding magic as they always do. Satoru has to keep collecting all of that spillage.
The ritual he and Shoko set up seems to be working well. The cacophony of colour in the air around him is making Satoru dizzy, but there’s a little less chaos with every passing minute as the magic pours into the model. Satoru slumps a little in relief. He watches the ritual like a hawk, ready to react the moment something starts going wrong. This level of vigilance, combined with the constant use of his talent, is more taxing than he expected. He feels shaky and cold, despite sweating through his shirt. Satoru’s eyes won’t focus on any one thing at a time, instead feeding him more visual stimuli than he can process.
Shoko’s phone begins to ring, and he reaches for it blindly. His arm, still sore and tingly from the Mount Mitake curse, moves more slowly than he wants it to. Satoru picks up. He only has the energy to hum to indicate he’s listening.
“Satoru, get out of the building.” Suguru’s voice, usually nice to hear, grates on Satoru’s senses.
“Why?”
“Fucking—question me later and get out now. ” Suguru sounds scared. No—worried? And a little out of breath.
Satoru’s thoughts are slow and sticky as molasses. Suguru’s not supposed to be in any danger. “Are you okay?”
“Am I—Satoru, please. Go outside right now.”
Confused and tired as he is, something in Satoru’s chest clenches painfully at the plea. “Okay.” He nods to himself. He needs to get up. “But are you okay?” Suguru says something unintelligible and probably profane, which worries Satoru even more. “Suguru,” he says, urgent now, struggling to untangle his legs.
“I am not okay, I’m furious. Bones, Satoru, you idiot. Skeletons. Support structures.”
“Huh?”
“The building! Shit. Okay. What’s something you’re absolutely sure of?”
“Um.” Satoru doesn’t want to say it.
“You don’t have to tell me, but think about it?”
“Okay.” It’s easy, with Suguru’s voice in his ear. Satoru gives up on getting off the table, legs refusing to listen to him now that he needs to focus on something else.
“You feel it? That certainty?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Good job. Stop using your talent. Let the magic go.”
Satoru does it, unthinking. “Okay.”
There’s a muffled string of curses, then, “focus on that confidence from before, and make more of it. Like an explosion.”
He’s asking for a lot. Satoru feels dizzy and a little out of breath. His head hurts, and his vision swims. There’s a noise in his ears, like groaning and crackling, gunshot-loud. He whimpers.
“Come on, Satoru. You can do this in your sleep.”
He can’t. He barely sleeps these days. The thought, and the feelings behind it, slice through his confidence like a hot knife through butter. Now that Satoru’s stopped frying his brain, his faculties slowly returning to him, he realises what Suguru’s trying to do. Probably. “Shit. Can’t do it.”
“Yes you can.” Suguru has never sounded this exasperated before.
“I mean, sure, in a minute, but I mean—the building’s coming down, right?” The sounds, it turns out, are not just ringing in his ears. It’s steel and concrete coming apart.
Satoru has none of his charms. Normally, all he’d need to do would be to feel safe and confident, multiply that into a thick miasma of protective magic, and ride out the collapse, then wait for search and rescue. He can probably pull it off. Maybe. It’s just that he’s not sure whether the table is really shifting under him, or if his head is spinning that hard.
There’s a long, slow inhale on Suguru’s end of the line, then a matching exhale. “You’re such a pain in my ass.”
Satoru laughs. “False! But I could be.” Fine dust begins falling from the ceiling like snow. “Hey, so listen—”
“Shut up, I’m concentrating.”
Rude. If Suguru doesn’t want touching parting words, he probably doesn’t deserve them. “Or what? I could be about to die here.” He doesn’t really think so, but this is the perfect opportunity for a dramatic confession. “Let me—”
Soft fur brushes against Satoru’s elbow, then his wrist. He looks down, and finds Dragon’s big blue eyes staring back at him. The cat blinks slowly. His aura is thick with deep purple confidence.
Satoru blinks back, shakes himself, and explodes the magic all around them. Dust stops raining down as the ravaged concrete and steel gain the conviction to hold on just a little longer. Satoru ends the call, then collapses back onto the table, waiting out dizziness and a horrible, restless feeling under his skin, worse than any itch. His limbs are heavy with fatigue, yet the need to move, to run, jump, do something—it’s nearly overwhelming. Satoru turns his head to check on the model, and finds that it has, in fact, become the new anchor for the curse.
Which is entirely beside the point now that the building’s structural integrity has been compromised. Magic can’t fix that. That’s the thing about it, Satoru muses—magic can break or distort, and sometimes protect, but it’s not a tool for building.
He’s being dramatic, he knows. There are plenty of accounts of magic being used to double or even triple the yield of fields and orchards, make fish throw themselves into nets, protect the public from disease. It can make roads and trains safer, reinforce structures against earthquakes, warn of natural disasters.
Satoru rarely does work of that sort. Maybe it’s for the best.
Dragon climbs onto his chest, heavy enough to make breathing the tiniest bit more laborious for Satoru. He buries his fingers into the cat’s white fluff and gets a powerful surge of relief from Suguru’s end of his bond with his familiar. Satoru basks in it for about thirty seconds. Then, rejuvenated, he carries the cat and the model out of the building. He sets the latter down on a bench next to Shoko. They exchange phones.
“You snitched on me,” Satoru accuses. He’s squinting through his sunglasses, the setting sun too much for his overworked senses.
Shoko shrugs. “Guilty, but aren’t you glad? Geto’s gonna be here any minute, by the way.”
Satoru makes a face, already on the phone with Yaga. The law firm’s staff needs to be evacuated, and then the Council will have to make a choice: smash the model and cause the real building to come down, or demolish it the usual way. The confidence Satoru infused it with will last for a day or so, and he can always refresh it, so they have time to dawdle all they want.
It’s possible that the Council will choose the unethical third option, reinforcing the building with confidence charms to keep up appearances. It’s no longer Satoru’s concern.
“That’s not your cat,” Shoko observes.
Satoru doesn’t bother answering. He can feel urgency and impatience through Dragon, compounding his own. He’s not sure what might come out of his mouth if he tries to talk to Shoko, only that it’ll be nasty.
Suguru arrives in Yaga’s private car. He jumps out of the driver’s seat and takes a moment to look Satoru up and down. With only a wave and a strained smile for Shoko, he turns back towards the car.
“Come on, we gotta go.”
“Where’s Princess?”
“I left her with Yaga. He’s heading for a veterinary clinic, but there’s still some time before sunset. If we hurry.”
Suguru pays no attention to traffic signs or the law, trusting in the charmed car to keep them safe and moving fast. He doesn’t say anything, and Satoru is grateful, taking the opportunity to rest his eyes and cuddling Dragon against his chest. They cover the last stretch between the car park and the clinic’s doors at a sprint.
Yaga is inside, slumped on a chair in the waiting room, alone.
“Have they started?” Satoru asks, out of breath.
“It’s done,” Yaga says, revealing the pink collar and leash on his lap. He hands them over to Suguru. “Do you boys need a ride back? I’m on my way to get chewed out by the Council, but I can make a detour.”
“It’s fine,” Suguru says, much steadier than Satoru feels. “We’ll get something to eat first. I left Dragon in the car, though.”
“That’s fine.” Yaga pats each of them on the shoulder as he walks past. “I’m sorry.”
They stand in the well-lit, pastel-coloured waiting room for a long moment after Yaga’s left. Satoru has the unpleasant feeling that it’s for his sake, but he can’t quite muster the energy to get himself together faster. His brain is still a little scrambled.
“You figured out how to manifest your familiar away from yourself,” he voices the first whole thought that comes to him.
Suguru shakes his head. “I sent him to you. That’s different.”
Satoru clenches and unclenches his fists. “If Dragon got crushed…”
“I would have inherited Six, obviously.” Suguru takes a step to close the distance between them, hesitates, stops. “But you wouldn’t have let him get crushed, so it’s irrelevant.”
“How’d you know the building would be affected? I was on site and didn’t see it.”
In retrospect, it was really stupid of him. Because the anchor got transferred to a smaller object made of weaker material, the curse’s effect was magnified, and mirrored onto the building.
Ruddy irritation blooms across Suguru’s aura. “It was Nanami’s mistake, too. He interviewed the cleaning staff, who complained about an unusual amount of dust and some leaking pipes, but disregarded this detail.”
Satoru shrugs. “So did I.”
“It was his job to highlight relevant information. I spoke to him about it, though. He promised to be more careful.”
Satoru wonders if now’s a good time to name this thing between them. Probably not. The circumstances are pretty shitty. Satoru is in a foul mood, and so is Suguru, though he’s trying to hide it. But then, when was the last time a week’s gone by and one or both of them hadn’t had a loss or at least a close call? He can’t wait for things to get better. They never might.
A vet tech chooses that moment to enter the room. Suguru peels away from Satoru to put the collar and leash on the reception desk.
“Would it be helpful if you kept these? I just bought them today. Maybe you can give them to someone who needs them.”
The woman offers him a sad smile and accepts. Suguru walks outside without a word. Satoru follows him, helpless. Somehow, they end up arguing about what to eat. They compromise by picking a place that offers both excellent noodles and dessert.
On the short walk there, Satoru fails to start the conversation he wants to start. Maybe it’s the kind of topic one needs to ease into.
“My day’s been pretty shit. Yours?”
Suguru huffs. He has his hands shoved into his pockets, shoulders slumped in defeat. “In the grand scheme of things, not too bad.”
“Sounds like a lie.”
“It’s not. I’ve had worse days.”
“Doesn’t make this one good.”
Suguru scowls. “I never called it good. Since when are you interested in sharing this sort of shit? Should I be worried?”
Satoru would roll his eyes, except he’s worried it might hurt. “I was going somewhere with this.”
“Really? Do tell.”
“No. You ruined the mood.”
“Satoru, you tease.”
They laugh, but it’s weak and short-lived. Satoru can’t get the image of Princess’ trusting brown eyes out of his head. He’d love to forget this entire day. Usually, when things get this depressing, he daydreams about the future.
“I can’t wait to open our shop,” he says, and immediately feels a little less tired. “We’ll be able to refuse Council assignments without worrying about Yaga’s situation. It’s gonna be great.”
“The Council will keep working us to the ground,” Suguru argues. “They’ll use any leverage they can, you know.”
Satoru shoots him a betrayed look over the rims of his glasses. “What the fuck? Are you trying to make me feel worse?”
Satoru is clearly joking, but Suguru meets his gaze evenly, expressionless. “I think hoping for something and getting disappointed is probably more painful than knowing not to expect too much.”
“Eh. I’d rather be disappointed than feel like I’m stuck. Gotta work towards something.”
“Is that so.” Suguru sounds strangely relieved. His aura flickers in the way it does when he’s hiding his feelings. “That’s good to hear.”
Satoru squints at him. “You’re being weird. Again.”
Suguru laughs, this time with real cheer. “Sorry. Let’s have a good night out in Princess’ honour, hm? A proper send-off.” He hooks his arm around Satoru’s neck, and it’s really too hot for that, but it’s not like Satoru is going to push him away.
“Yeah,” he agrees, remembering how soft the fur around her ears was. “Let’s.”
It’s really not a great time for a grand confession. The mood isn’t right. But Suguru isn’t going anywhere, so it’s fine. Maybe tomorrow will be the day.