Archive of Our Own

(The sea is a glass mirror that summer. Clouds drift all over the blue waters in perfect copies of the fluffy white puffs marching slowly across the sky, and when the sun manages to peek out between them in long, languid stretches its beams beat down hard. It’s hot, the kind of heat that greets the body like a heavy wall that feels a little like suffering. There’s barely enough of a breeze to whisk away the sweat beading on his skin.

The far shore is a dream on the horizon made up of hazy heat coiling up in rivulets and the water twinkles so still and peaceful that the ripples which shimmer out from his dipped toe feels akin to breaking apart a masterpiece. For a moment he hesitates with his leg arched prim, toe dunked, and thinks that his mother has the right idea. She’s sitting in a chair close to the water’s edge where the gentle tide swells around her bare feet, face hidden beneath the tilt of a floppy, wide brim hat and a book splayed open in her lap, looking straight out of a postcard.

He backs away from the water, remembering the beach towel the he can lounge on when his cousin comes careening by with a shout, her bare feet slapping across the wooden pier jutting out into the lake. She leaps. He watches the breathless second that she hangs in the air, body tucked tight in a cannonball, before a bombastic splash breaks the water.

His heart races when she doesn’t resurface immediately, but then her head bobs up a ways away and she’s calling for him to join in. Water’s fine!

He does, his earlier hesitation blown away by her dramatic entrance, although he wades into the water instead, cautious - he’s been a natural swimmer for as long as he can remember, long enough to respect the sea. In the sunlight the water shines in blinding patches of quicksilver. The waves swell over his hips and stomach and higher, begging him to come deeper. When the water tickles his throat he finally dips underneath it to play the diving game he’s always loved, swimming down and down until the sunlight is a distant, glittery dapple above.

The strain in his lungs is thrilling by the time he reaches out to touch the fine sand at the bottom, letting a handful of it puff and slide through his fingers. He calls it a victory and turns to rise back up to the surface when it happens.

His limbs begin to grow heavy and unwieldy, throwing off his coordination. His smooth strokes from before degrades into choppy hacks at the water that turns more desperate when he realizes that he’s not moving up and the burn in his chest is growing tighter. Demanding. Air leaks from his mouth in pockets up shiny bubbles that zips towards the surface as swiftly as he wants.

It’s too much to fight. The pressure builds and builds until it breaks the seal of his mouth and he inhales, water surging violently into his lungs, making him burn and seize and-

Keiji jerks awake with too little air and a panicked, aborted noise caught in his throat. The first full breath that rattles out of his chest is gasping as he sits up, legs trapped within thin bedsheets. His mind is still half-drenched in the struggle of his dream, remembering the inescapable pull of the currents, and he twists and tries to untangle himself so quickly that he knocks his phone to the floor. It thumps onto the carpet, loud and jarring, jerking the rest of his awareness to him. 

He’s at home.

It’s dim and quiet with the blinds drawn closed, the only noises being the rasping of his own breath and the gravelly crunch of a car driving by outside.

Staring at the far wall, Keiji remembers the steps. He concentrates on settling his pounding heart with even, measured breaths. The leftover thrill ebbs away. His breathing slows. He swallows his heart back down where it belongs and with one final long exhale, he feels present again.

His day clothes are rumpled but mostly salvageable.

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep at all, and definitely not so deeply as to have a dream. Short naps always makes him feel wearier than he had been before taking them, his body protesting a snatched chance for real sleep. Scrubbing a tired hand over his face, Keiji stands and turns on the lights. The sharp wash of brightness makes him squint and scowl even as it helps to chase some lingering discomfort away. Routine helps with the rest. Fixing his bed is as easy as billowing the duvet back over the mattress and smoothing out the creases, top half peeled back to make room for the pillows. He picks up the phone and checks the time. Just past seven pm. As he straightens his shirt out in the mirror he sweeps the pads of his fingers over the bags beneath his eyes, he resolves himself to his planned outing.

He cracks a smile at himself in the mirror on the way out his bedroom, feels it fall as flat as usual, and sighs while padding towards the door.

“You know the forecast sucks out there tonight, Akaashi,” Konoha says, their eyes glimpsing up from the glow of their cell phone. Keiji cringes in the darkened apartment, caught, and spins around to see his roommate reclined across the length of the couch. They’re a sinewy lump on the cushions, one leg outstretched and the other poking languidly off the couch, the corner of the argyle throw on their lap trailing against the floor. Konoha’s thumb jerks over one shoulder, pointing toward the rattling window. Keiji looks, mostly to bide time before responding. He contemplates the window.

It’s a very poor view of what lays outside, their apartment overlooking a nondescript corner of an alleyway and a sliver of city sky beyond that. Dusk is falling in rapid strokes of pinks and oranges bruised through with the vivid reds of a summer sunset. In less than an hour night will fall completely.

But Konoha wasn’t pointing out the pleasant scenery.

Down on the little strip of sidewalk he watches a pair of bobbing horns walk by, thin shadows flitting in their wake. He’s reminded of swirling plumes of exhaust that sputters out of old pipes.

“We just need to get that fixed,” Keiji comments. “It rattles with the traffic. How did you even get in here again?”

“With the spare key that’s been under that awful welcome mat of yours since forever. And you suck at changing the subject. It’s not time for the meeting yet and it’s the middle of the oumagatoki hour.”

“I know," Keiji says. Oumagatoki: when the sky darkens at dusk, the time of meeting yokai, yurei, and dark creatures. He props a hip against the back of the couch in an easy stance, the one that usually helps convince Konoha that all his plans are thoughtful and sure rather than occasionally not. “I’m only meeting a contact.”

“A contact,” Konoha repeats. “They made an appointment already?”

“No, this is just a consultation. That caller of Oikawa’s finally admitted to needing some help. We’re going to have a talk over at Yamiji-san’s and then I’ll make it back for the meeting with more than enough time to spare.”

Konoha looks about as convinced as they are disinclined to move from their spot on the couch. “You should have told me about this earlier so I could’ve joined in. Do you need the company?”

Keiji considers the offer but has to turn it away upon double checking his phone. “That’s okay. I’m already cutting it close for time.”

“If you say so. But tell me the next time you start feeling out a new client. We’re partners, yeah?” Konoha tucks both feet onto the couch, knees bent, and reaches for the tv remote. Its glow cuts through the dark. “Go on then, can’t have you showing up late and givin’ us a bad rep.”

“I’ll be back soon,” Keiji promises, turning for the door after Konoha bats a hand in a shooing motion. It’s the middle of summer, the nighttime still warm and balmy, so Keiji forgoes grabbing anything but his keys and wallet on the way out. He spills onto the streets just as the lamps begin to flicker on, casting spotlights on the ground.

During the short walk over he sifts through the information he already knows about his possible client in order to make their first meeting run smoother. Bokuto Koutarou, one year older than him, works as a teacher for a local school, ‘loud’ and ‘excitable’ according to Oikawa, ‘but mostly in a good way’, whatever that entailed. ‘Human’ was another significant bullet point to consider. Humans typically didn’t make requests of Keiji’s talents, but Oikawa’s radio program-cum-monster-networking system must be gaining a growing audience outside of the niche fans Oikawa already had. More and more their help agency was beginning to receive emails and phone calls from different parties interested in getting anything from advice on the best monster-friendly neighborhoods to helping someone escape a bad situation to things of a less… explicitly legal nature. Or the situations that Keiji liked to think of as the entertaining ones.

All and always for good causes: to ease the lives of those who can’t manage it alone.

Keiji has no complaints for the extra attention either. Greater visibility meant more opportunities for people like this Bokuto person to come and find their agency, which meant more chances for Keiji to help people out.

The bar he’s after sits along a lively strip of buildings just waking up for the night. A little pro-mutant sticker shines in the corner of its window, brazen when positioned right below the streaks painted in lgbta colors.

It’s not too busy yet. When he steps in he gets an unobstructed view straight at the man he’s meeting, sitting in the far booth they agreed upon.

Keiji veers over to the bar first and greets the bartender with a wave, who comes over wearing an easy grin after easing out of a conversation with a different customer. “Hey, Akaashi.”

“Sarukui,” Keiji returns, glancing briefly over his shoulder. “How has that guy over there been? Has he done anything strange?”

“The human? Besides looking extremely uncomfortable and ogling that guy with the beak the next seat over? Not really.”

“Great. Can you get me two of your cheapest somethings? My paycheck wasn’t the best last week.”

“Everyone told you not to buy that scuba diving equipment.”

“It seemed like an idea at the time,” Keiji says, half returning Sarukui’s smile. He pulls money from his wallet in exchange for the two beers that Sarukui pops open and passes over with a roll of his eyes, the one which Keiji has learned translated to anything from a fond Oh, you to I have no idea what goes on in your head. This one feels like a happy amalgamation of them both.

Swapping final goodbyes, Keiji hooks the drinks between his fingers and weaves his way towards the booth.

The guy glances up, and then to the side, and then down at the beer that Keiji slides over to him. “Uh, I… Sorry, but I’m kinda waiting to meet someone else.”

Keiji hums and sits down, scooting to the middle of the seat with a series of offensive, pleathery squeaks. “That’s me. I’m Akaashi Keiji. And you’re Bokuto Koutarou from the email. If it would have helped we probably should have come up with some sort of keyword to confirm our identities with each other, but I have a card here with me.”

He pulls out his wallet and passes over a business card, Bokuto taking it with several owlish blinks.

The man gives him that look that Keiji is used to getting during these casual consultations. The ‘I wasn’t quite expecting to be invited to this venue’ one paired with a brief silence. Akaashi fills it with ample patience until Bokuto settles into their first impressions and drags his beer towards himself with a word of thanks. Keiji is waiting for the ‘loud’ and ‘excitable’ descriptors to kick in. So far the Bokuto before him is anything but; subdued, more like, or perhaps sorely out of his element.

“So, you’re a teacher?” Keiji tries. “Should I call you ‘Sensei’?”

“Oh. Uh, just ‘Bokuto’ is fine.”

“What can I do for you then, Bokuto-san? You didn’t give much in your email. I’ll need more information to know if I can help you at all.”

Bokuto nods, takes a sip of beer and does a poor job of hiding a grimace at its taste. When he sets the bottle down he still doesn’t say anything, even though he takes a breath like he had been planning to. It turns into a frustrated huff instead. His eyes jump to the door when the little bell chimes a welcome to a new gaggle of customers.

Keiji takes the hint.

“Would you like to come upstairs?” He asks.

“Up where?”

“Upstairs,” Keiji slowly repeats, pointing a finger up at the ceiling, earning only a look of pure confusion. The man even glances upwards too, as if with enough willpower he could see through to the next level. Keiji sweeps up his drink and slides out of the booth before waiting for an answer. “Come on, it’s not far.”

The squeak of the booth lets him know Bokuto is following him towards the back. Keiji parts the little partition, turns, and gestures for Bokuto to walk ahead of him.

Bokuto climbs the stairs with one hand trailing against the rail-less wall as if unsure of the structure’s sturdiness or their destination, or both, when halfway up a creaking step he stops and exclaims a sharp “Ooh!”, prompting Keiji to look up and raise both eyebrows in question.

“The spot makes tons more sense now! I was kinda freaked out by everything at first, like, I thought we were gonna meet in a plain old office or café or not… here, y’know… but you can take a client back here without raising any suspicion, can’t you?”

“Not the right kind of suspicion,” Keiji answers, causing Bokuto to chirp a laugh while hopping up the last few steps up. There was the burgeoning ‘loud’ trait, then.

The room is small and cluttered with various storage items packed in the corners. Closing the door, Keiji navigates his way to the string dangling from the overhead light. The bulb clicks on. A yank to the second string gets the fan churning at the muggy air.

“Take a seat here, please.” Keiji offers, stepping around the low table situated on the floor. While Bokuto sits and breaks the quiet with a stream of comments on the room’s décor – there isn’t much to comment on but the man finds a will and a way –  Keiji pushes through the curtain of clothing hanging on a strung up line to close the balcony door, shutting the room into a fuller privacy. It might get too warm without a breeze coming in through the balcony but he isn’t planning on staying so long as to cause any mutual suffering.

Taking a seat opposite Bokuto, Keiji clacks his untouched drink onto the table. “I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable - both this location and my excuse for coming upstairs. You’ll be able to talk freely now. How can I help you?”

“Uh… Okay, so, first of all this is really a family-related thing, which is why I can’t get personally caught up in it and why I was super vague in my email? It would cause some trouble. I mean, even more trouble with my family, so…”

“You have my discretion,” Keiji promises.

Bokuto takes a breath, puffs it out, furrows his brows, and finally bursts out a story in one huge gust. “My grandpa’s been keeping this monster on lockdown for as long as I can remember and I really, really want to help him get out because I think he might not be getting treated right over there and no one else is doing anything about it.”

Bokuto is flushed red by the time he’s finished, breathless with relief or guilt or some potent mix of both, Keiji isn’t sure. He’s too busy letting the information sink in without betraying his emotions with the visceral reaction that wants to leap from his chest. Keiji hasn’t encountered an issue so horribly wrong in a long time, and he can feel a heavy dose of distaste simmering on the back of his tongue.

“Is this monster kept locked up all the time?”

“Yeah? Um, maybe? I don’t really know but, uh, when I saw him he was, you know… wearing fancy restraints. It was for a display.”

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with what that means,” Keiji bites out. He can take a wild guess as to what it could entail.

Bokuto winces, confirming his suspicions. “Yeah. It’s a… a party thing? A big family reunion but with a ton of other important people around who schmooze and show off a bunch of stuff, mostly. That’s when I saw him.”

“And no one thought it was problematic to include a restrained monster among this ‘stuff’ to be shown off?” 

“I did!” Bokuto concedes quickly, then droopingly. “I do. Now I do. I know it’s - fucked up to do something like that to anyone no matter what they are. I didn’t know any better when I was little because I was really little back then and mutants didn’t have it as good with, you know, just about everything, so I took what I saw it for granted and thought it was totally normal. I thought he was pretty to see and when we talked he wasn’t… mean or scary like I heard they were. He was one of the nicest people there, actually.” Bokuto bites his lip and plucks at his drink’s label, peeling one corner of it into shambles. “I know I’m sounding ignorant. You look kinda… really angry.”

Keiji realizes his expression had turned harder during the story and forces himself to smooth out his features, missing the days when he could shrug on impartiality like a second skin. He’s never been as calm as his outward appearances suggested; not all the time, and definitely not unerringly. It’s the way he responds that he has always tried to tame rather than the depth of his feelings; emotions that can be partially quelled by steady words, reactions that don’t need to boil over and burn into vulnerable flesh. There are lids made to clamp down on things, the contents beneath obscured by plumes of steam. Let it marinate there instead of coming out raw.

“You want my help,” he manages to gently say. “Which means you’ve learned to be better now, Bokuto-san. I would never fault you for learning.”

“Of course!” It’s definitely relief suffusing Bokuto's voice now. “Even though I can’t do anything on my own. Can you really help?”

And this is what they were both here for, after all. Keiji nods, trailing an idle finger through the condensation dripping down the neck of his beer, summoning up patience and strength.

“I can, if you’re willing to give me a little more information.”

Dusk has fallen by the time Keiji pushes into his apartment, tossed keys clattering abrasively onto the table. Distaste roils heavy on his tongue, Bokuto’s words clamoring uneasily in his mind.

He’s missed the high note of oumagatoki altogether but still feels a simmer of it somewhere deep within him, stretched out thin with the part of him that always mourns when the sun grinds itself into the horizon and gives the heavens back to the moon. It rests heavier over his heart than even the dead hours of ushi no koku, which he has never felt as anything more than a residually bewitching thrill on par with staying up far too past his bedtime. Keiji has been a morning person since childhood, early to rise and happy to dwell in the wane, buttery daylight of the early hours, watching Tokyo’s skyline shrug off its shroud of haze and mist.

Konoha’s head of blonde hair pops up from the couch looking disheveled, like they may have been close to napping mere moments before. Their voice has a matching laziness to it, slow and open. “Hey. You’re back just in time for the, oh, holy crap you look pissed. Did the consultation go sideways?”

“Yes and no. I’ll explain more at the meeting, but it’s definitely a rescue case.”

“Great.” But Konoha says nothing more than that, tucking their legs close to make room for Keiji to sink down onto the next cushion. Keiji ignores their heavy gaze as he picks his tablet off the table and writes down everything he heard from Bokuto, mustering detail after detail until the list becomes too ungainly. He edits it down. The white envelope stuffed into his back pocket, also given to him by Bokuto, has gotten wrinkled from the trip but he smooths it out and slips it between the tablet’s case, shutting it tight to keep the paper from slipping free.

And then he closes his eyes for nary a second when the sound of the bathroom door opening resounds through the quiet room.

“Yahoo!” Oikawa breezily announces upon poking his head in. Keiji cracks his eyes open. Oikawa looks perfectly styled despite the late hour, glasses perched neatly on his nose, buttons clasped to just beneath his collarbone. “Meeting’s starting in five! Mattsun just got here but Watacchi is going to tune in over Skype. Something about ‘not being able to get away from home at this time of night like a normal person.’ He is such a little morning bird just like - oh, Keiji-kun, you look terrible. Do you need to postpone? I’m sure that Konoha-san can fill you in on all the details later.”

“No,” Keiji says, Oikawa’s chatter an odd balm for his looming exhaustion. “Thank you, but I’m fine. Let’s cross over.” He slides his tablet off the table and shuffles towards the bathroom without further fanfare.

Behind him, Oikawa asks, “What’s happened?”

“Don’t really know. We’ve just gotten wind of a new case from that boy who tuned in to your program and it seems particularly shitty,” Konoha answers. “Akaashi said it’s a rescue case so there’s probably some sketchy stuff happening behind the scenes. I think he’s pissed about it.”

“Oh no, I had a feeling it could be something like that. It’s terrible to think how these things are happening today,” Oikawa murmurs in sympathy, but his sentiment is swiftly chased away by Konoha’s scoff.

“Are still happening today, more like, and it’s of no surprise to me if a monster’s getting the bad end of things.”

“This again,” Oikawa bemoans. They’re both still in the living area. “You know that we’ve made so much progress in the past decade especially. You can go to the nearest temple and get married to your paramour now if you want to. That was groundbreaking.”

“Yes, yay for marriage and all of that, but again, you first generation types are the only ones who really gain from most of this ‘mutant’ talk – just a fancy new way of branding something old so the humans don’t shake and take up their pitch forks and torches in the middle of the night to burn you down. You’re too young to know that I mean that in a literal way, little one. We are still the monsters. We shouldn’t want to be anything but what we are. ‘Mutants’, really? What is this-”

“Do not bring Marvel into this perfectly good discussion-”

“X-Men?” Konoha hisses. “It’s a bad point of reference. You know everyone thinks about the movies when they hear that word. The lives of the people in that verse are shit!”

“It’s trendy. Ah, no, let me speak my part – you elderly have no eye for what’s popular these days. It is trendy. It’s a powerful reclamation of a word that has been synonymous with ‘freak’ for too many of us, and while I admit that perhaps it shouldn’t have been coined so officially as an umbrella term for everyone who has special abilities, because it’s still an uncomfortable label for just as many people, the symbolism and humor of the word salvages it for me.”

“Humor,” Konoha flatly says.

“Irony! That we can relate to these characters with terrible lives and take back the meaning of mutant for ourselves too, just like they do. In the X-Men the mutants are treated as lesser than humans, degraded, experimented on, and taken advantage of, but they still band together and save the world multiple times. They keep their humanity because we share this world, Konoha-san,” Oikawa says, his voice taking on the musical tone that it does when he begins to find his groove. “And until space exploration advances more, or until aliens finally come to visit like I’ve always said they would and kindly point out the best candidate for the next habitable planet, we will always share this world. A peaceful balance needs to be made for everyone’s sake.”

“Heartwarming speech, but that’s not really ironic.”

“Ugh!”

“Do you know any of the villains in X-Men? They turn to terrorism. Of their own kind, even.”

“That’s…” Oikawa blows out a breath, music drooping to a sour note. “An unfortunate thing, I have to admit. It could set a dangerous precedent for people who like to borrow from fiction and try the same things in real life.”

“Right? It happens all the time with video games now, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, I’ve read terrible things about gun violence in other countries. It’s the fantasy of it all that desensitizes people to the real world consequences of using violence.”

A rare silence of agreement passes. It doesn’t last very long.

“The idea of mutation from a human standard doesn’t sit well with me either, because it totally does not apply to me,” Konoha starts up, prompting Keiji to accidentally kick the bathroom door with more force than necessary so that it rattles against the back wall. The noise finally prompts the two to begin to walk over, albeit still entrenched in conversation. Keiji digs deep for patience and finds it in the form of squinting vapidly at the far wall.

“Speaking of media,” Konoha continues. “It’s here in Japan too, all of those thrillers and fantasy movies and anime with monsters who, at the end of the day, usually get slaughtered by overpowered teenagers who then get lauded as heroes. Talk about dangerous precedents.”

“Mutants do get cast in a positive light sometimes.”

“Now subtract all the times when they’re dropped into some weird, secret military organization, as if they owe humanity anything just for being born different. Why can’t we live plain, boring lives and die from old age too?”

Oikawa sighs with drama but doesn’t press the topic, it being one that the two of them churn over far too often only to stumble into the same quagmires. Terminology, history, culture, the onward march of civil and legal rights for monsterkind – mutants as Oikawa would say. Oikawa’s parents were both human and the mastery of his abilities was an exciting path of tailored schooling and discovery rather than a simple state of being. His optimism tends to grate on Konoha’s wealth of experience, but Oikawa respects Konoha enough not invalidate them with starry-eyed prospects for the future.

“Let’s just hope for the best and do our best, shall we?” Oikawa peacefully concludes.

“Fair,” Konoha concedes. “Why does this always happen when you drop by?”

“Excuse me, you started it.”

“I did not.”

“You did keep it going,” Keiji says, slouched and only listening with half an ear.

“Don’t go hopping in now!” retorts Konoha while Oikawa releases a triumphant “Hah!”

Keiji pauses by the bathroom sink and resists the urge to cross his arms in response to the pair’s dallying, leaving him to gaze dispassionately into Oikawa’s apartment. From this angle he can just make out a framed picture hanging on the wall painted with streaks of colors that, with less distance, he knows turns into a beautiful depiction of a flowered meadow, hung there since the first time Keiji has ever been invited in to see it.

The suite-style arrangement of their apartments had bothered Keiji at first. It seemed odd and uncomfortable, a remnant of college dorm life that he would hate to repeat all over again. He had only been drawn to the complex because of its low rent, its relatively convenient location, and the ivy crawling up one side of the building’s façade, so green and thick that it looked half-engulfed in whimsy. Vain as it might be, the prettiness had attracted Keiji into considering it more than the other places he had been viewing. There hadn’t been much difference between all of the prospective homes anyway as far as price range was concerned.

Adjusting to shared living had been a trial, particularly after those first few days of learning that Oikawa, the occupant on the other side of the door, could spend an inordinate amount of time locked in the bathroom, effectively locking Keiji out of the bathroom, and that he enjoyed singing in the shower, and that he loudly dropped a bottle of something from his vast collection of bath and beauty products nearly every other day.

But two and a half years could do wonders for finding and settling into a comfortable routine.

Now having two (effectively three with Konoha) grown adults share the same bathroom hardly caused anything more than sporadic inconveniences when they were all home at the same time and needed to use it. The bathroom itself was newly remodeled. Big and roomy and not at all the cramped space Keiji had been expecting to find. They were all cleanly so they didn’t need a tacit plan to keep the shared space grime and clutter free, excepting Oikawa’s ample collection and that strange charm Konoha tied to the shower head, the one that flutters and chimes with the humidity when the shower is on.

There are the familiar patterns now too: the arrangement of everyone’s belongings; how they leave both bathroom doors open to turn it into a corridor rather than an barrier, allowing sounds from both rooms to filter through; everyday habits that have grown as familiar to Keiji as his very own. Konoha liked to soak in the bath for ages and will fight tooth and nail for the first dibs all throughout winter, and fall, and those brisker spring days. It would be easier to count the days where they didn’t seek out warmth from one source or another rather than the other way around. Oikawa lets Keiji use his bath bombs, and Keiji will halve the natural bar soaps that he likes to use and leave it in the dish for Oikawa’s leisure.

It’s a pleasant accord.

Still, three is an odd crowd in a shared bathroom. He, Oikawa, and Konoha wind up piled into each other’s space. At least the dallying finally seems to be over.

Conversation dwindles away and in the waiting silence Oikawa smartly snaps his fingers. Both doors slam shut. Another snap and the sliding bolts fixed to the inside of each door locks into place with twin clicks. A third and the door to Oikawa’s room flies open again, revealing anything but the room that Keiji had been peering into just a minute ago.

It’s much larger than the square footage of both of their apartments put together. Up on the high, high ceiling a myriad of pinholes drops beads of sunlight on everything below, illuminating the space to a functional brightness, like an overcast noon.

Matsukawa catches sight of them from where he’s planted in front of a laptop resting on a thick wooden table, its surface a million curves of beautifully varnished grain. “Ah, here they are. Took you long enough.”

“Patience is a virtue, Mattsun. That barely took over five minutes, so we’re just on time.” Oikawa makes a dive for a spot before the laptop, settling onto his knees with an excited bounce. “Hi, Watacchi!”

“Hi, Oikawa-san,” comes an amused response. “And Akaashi?”

“Hi, Watari,” Keiji greets, hoping his voice carries enough to make up for not squeezing into the camera’s frame for a proper hello. He’s walked over to one of the twisted, oblong windows fashioned from a tree hollow. Brushing aside the billowing gauze curtains reveals rolling green meadows outside, speckled with wildflowers and tall sentinel trees. He even hears birdsong drifting down from the unseen forest canopy above.

Keiji still hasn’t figured out where exactly this place is located or what it is other than utterly in-between and probably not completely real. A mix of something true and something totally forged together through sheer will and imagination. Something akin to magic permeated the space, not felt by someone like Keiji who had no affinity for such things, but seen in the prim vibrancy of everything: the whorls in the walls spun like little galaxies, the mossy weaved rug underfoot, the branches jutting out from the far wall that form a small spiral staircase to an upper deck that Keiji has never seen, but that he can tell sits bathed in those million drops of sunlight falling in from the ceiling.

He thinks the forest outside is real though. It matches perfectly the painting hanging on Oikawa’s wall.

When asked about the connection between the two the most Oikawa has ever given was a fond, ‘Iwa-chan and I were very outdoorsy when we were kids, but I like his decorating, don’t you? It’s like a secret base from Pokemon.’

“Eight minutes now, actually,” Matsukawa corrects as Keiji fixes the curtains closed, already missing the shy warmth on his skin. “You always forget to throw in the delay. This isn’t a Ghibli movie, Tooru.”

A soft thud as Oikawa zips a pillow into Matsukawa’s face and a groan from the laptop – Watari, who’s likely tired of the way Matsukawa unfailingly works in a Ghibli reference into every meeting.

“And look, you even brought blondie over this time too. Girls get the best seat in the house.” Matsukawa, recovered from the assault, stands and gestures grandly to the dented beanbag chair he had been occupying moments before.

Keiji’s confusion only lasts a moment when a chiming laugh lifts into the air from behind. “Yeah right. I’ll take the sofa over that lumpy thing.”

A hand clasps onto Keiji’s elbow and then he’s being guided towards the sofa, arm pressed against the soft swell of a breast. Keiji keeps his composure only because he’s used to Konoha’s unannounced shape shifting. They’re wearing curves now: a light smile, painted nails, pale hair sliding over their cheeks when they whip around. They both sit down on the sofa – rather, Keiji has no choice but to take a seat next to Konoha when they drop to the cushions without letting go.

As the other three catch up with one another, Keiji lowers his voice. “You don’t have to keep doing that. You can trust everyone here.”

“I trust you because you saved me,” Konoha whispers back, leaning closer for privacy. Embarrassment rushes through him at the frank sincerity in the other’s voice. He wants to say that it was a group effort, hardly a task he could have achieved on his own, but Konoha gratefully spares him an opportunity to interject by continuing, darting a glance at Oikawa. “And I trust that little one over there because he cares, even if he’s the biggest groupie that I’ve ever met in my life. The rest are only co-workers who I owe much less... Does this bother you? It always seems to bother you. I do it just because I feel like it too.”

Keiji has never known what sex Konoha truly is, whether sex and gender is as much of a binding concept for a monster who shifts as seamlessly as a spill of silk, or if the enigma wrapped around them is one of complete personal preference. They wear the guise of a woman as often as they do a man, always recognizable by the smirking cant of their lips.

“Only in principal. I just think you should tell them one day. We’re all working together so it’s important to extend some trust to each other.”

Konoha considers that with a pause, glancing out to the others. “Humor me, Akaashi.”

“I always humor you.”

“Humor me some more,” Konoha insists, voice rising from a whisper into a laugh that has the same sharp edges as always, only shaped by a higher pitch.

Matsukawa claps twice, drawing all of their attention. “Okay, lovebirds, I’m glad you’re with us again. We’re about to get started with Tokyo’s Howl’s Moving Castle Help, Rescue & Requisition Agency meeting number… something.”

“That’s not our name!” Oikawa protests. “And ninety-seven!”

“Yes,” Matasukawa drawls. “That. Round of applause for our resident secretary.”

“We don’t have a secretary.”

Matsukawa glosses over the objection. “We couldn’t get everyone here tonight but you guys know the drill on who emails who afterwards. Remember to keep each other posted, et cetera, I think Watari’s got something to say first, and then I have a PowerPoint.”

“Boo!” Konoha jeers, hands cupped around their mouth.

“With links to Youtube videos, of course. Come on, I’m not that heartless.”

“Debatable, considering how light my wallet was after our last lunch together,” Oikawa grumbles, nose scrunching up when Matsukawa only responds with an easy grin.

“I have something to present too,” Keiji adds.

“Ah, that’s right. Let’s squeeze that in before Mattsun’s?”

“Fine by me,” Matsukawa says. “Anything else? Konoha-san?”

“I’m just here to watch, thanks.”

“Tooru?”

“I have nothing that I haven’t forwarded already. I’ve been too busy with my research to find much action lately. Skills and resources that I am always happy and willing to extend, by the way.”

“I’m not even going to touch that one,” Matsukawa mutters.

Konoha cants slightly forward. “Cryptozoology isn’t a real field of study.”

Keiji swallows down a groan, face twisting with exasperation. Matsukawa snorts and resettles in his beanbag chair, legs akimbo, the picture of leisure. He and Keiji share a look as if to say here we go again, except Matsukawa doesn’t appear nearly as beleaguered as Keiji feels.

Oikawa is holding a finger aloft as if this is a matter of pride and everything else can wait.

“Folklorist, Konoha-san, please. Besides, the very definition of cryptozoology includes the study of creatures that appear in folklore but whose existence lacks physical evidence.”

“Right. Like the Big Foot.”

“It’s just Bigfoot. And who knows, maybe Bigfoot is an old, elusive mutant who no one has had the chance to sit down and have tea with yet? Could you imagine it?”

“A big hairy thing, yeah, sat hunched in front of a tea set with it’s pinky up around a dainty-”

“No, oh my god. Not that! Imagine all of the strange things, the youkai and bakemono that have been passed down in stories for centuries, real every single one of them and right here with us. Pseudosciences are just sciences that the world isn’t ready for yet.” Oikawa asserts, smile a benign curve of his lips. “Did you know? Many monsters still categorically fall into the revised, if dated, term of ‘cryptids’ - and not just the ones who can’t walk or talk like humans. As for creatures whose existence can’t be proven without a doubt… I wonder how many people would say ‘yes’ if you asked them whether they thought kitsune were real?”

“Alright,” Keiji says, fixing Oikawa with an unimpressed gaze. “Watari, I think this is your cue to begin before this gets even worse.”

“Er, sure,” Watari agrees. Oikawa and Konoha smile challengingly to one another, the former gracing them with wink before turning his attention to the laptop as Watari takes it away.

“Uppity academics. Fuck that he’s so cute though,” Konoha mutters under breath, hand twining together with Keiji’s with fingers that are finer-boned than he’s gotten used to holding lately. They’re still slender and warm, a welcome respite from his own cold-bloodedness. “‘Creature’ I’m fine with but cryptids are animals and I am real by being.”

“You know he was just teasing you. Moreover, you enjoy it.”

“I resent that,” Konoha hisses, the pink dusting their cheeks a stark refutation of the vitriol coating their next words. “I hope his next publication has the biggest typo right in the middle of it.”

Keiji feels the corners of his mouth lift in helpless amusement. After a token pause Konoha huffs out a breath of laughter too, drawing their joined hands into their lap.

Things gratefully settle into a professional atmosphere afterwards. Watari talks about a few clients that he’s spoken to and helped since the last meeting, the progress of the current case he’s currently working on, and the whispers going on in some corners of the monster community. He’s thorough but not dragging, wrapping up fifteen minutes later.

“It sounds like you’re handling things as reliably as ever over there,” Oikawa praises.

“Well, I don’t get as many clients as some of you do.”

“But that doesn’t matter to the people you do help. To that one person you’ve helped it could have been life changing!”

Eventually the baton gets passed to Keiji, who rouses himself to share his piece.

“I met with man named Bokuto Koutarou earlier this afternoon at the bar. He learned about our agency through Oikawa’s radio program. He’s human. The just of it is this: He wants to help release a monster who has been held in captivity since Bokuto-san’s childhood, at the least, which was the first and last time he saw the monster. He has reason to believe that this monster could be being mistreated. The problem is that he doesn’t know where the monster is being kept now other than with the grandparent and probably at one of their vacation homes, he said, but he’s never personally visited it more than once many years ago, and extenuating circumstances prevents him from directly asking a family member for its exact location.” Keiji flips open his tablet’s cover and grabs the wrinkled envelope that tries to slip out. “But he gave me two photos.”

“Ah, lucky, I was beginning to think this was completely hopeless,” Matsukawa squints at the photos Keiji passes around. “A picture of paradise and… A koi pond? Isn’t that too small to work with?”

“It’s not ideal, but it will work. It looks deep enough. Just having an image in mind will let me travel there.”

“You haven’t had to use your powers in a while,” Oikawa says, studying the pictures next. “Will it be too hard on you?”

“He’d do it anyway,” Konoha mutters.

“It won’t be too hard on me.”

“Akaashi is the best choice for this kind of thing,” Watari chimes in. “He’s good at doing reconnaissance.”

“Except we don’t know anything about the place he’s gonna scope out.” Konoha lets go of Keiji’s hand as the photos cycles to them. “These photos are old. One of them’s just a pretty scenic shot that you can take just about anywhere in rural Japan. In the other one we can’t see anything but a koi pond, a garden, some mountains in the background, and a wall. The entire site could be different by now. The place could be crawling with people, cameras, security, who knows? I don’t like it. We’re working with less than we ever have.”

“She has a point,” Matsukawa says. “We’re good, but we’re a small agency. This one might not be able to be done with us.”

Keiji reclaims the photos and tucks them away. “I’m taking the job,” he says, drawing everyone’s attention. “I will need all of your help for it, but I’m going to at least have a look around the place. If it’s beyond us then we can refer Bokuto-san to a different agency.”

Konoha groans. “You really are pissed about this. You want to save this guy.”

“Well, I’m on board with Keiji-kun if he’s already so resolved!” Oikawa enthuses, tilting up his glasses as he wiggles the laptop towards him. “Excuse me a moment, Watacchi. That stone wall in the photo - it’s the kind that enclose gardens or big family properties, like where the head of house would live. Either the place was designed in an old-fashioned way or it’s land that has been maintained and kept within the family for generations.” His fingers clack across the keyboard. With one last flourishing tap, he stops and smiles. “Your Bokuto-san-” He turns the laptop. “He’s from old money.”

“They have an entire page?” Matsukawa marvels, Keiji slipping off the sofa to squint the page too. The site was public domain, easy to access information. It strikes him as an invasion of privacy to essentially internet stalk someone, but he should have thought of looking the Bokutos up online sooner upon realizing what little information they had to work with. Knowing something as simple as where exactly the grandfather was born would help pinpoint the location of the home.

He had never anticipated this high of a status though. The Bokuto he met had been completely disarming and down to earth.

Oikawa leans against the table, satisfied. “I’ve traced genealogical trees before. Looking more into family history would be an easy thing, and it could help uncover a story or two about this monster who has been with the family for so long.”

“Please do,” Keiji responds, grateful for Oikawa’s expertise. Being in academia, Oikawa had access to journals and records which Keiji wouldn’t even think to look at, not to mention colleagues who could share their knowledge with each other.

This might work after all, he thinks, gripped by hopeful tendrils of excitement. He lets them take root. They were making progress, this could find a good, happy resolution to this conundrum, and Keiji will help get a monster out and living life as he ought to be: free.

He sweeps over the text, scrolling. In the middle of the profile it says Hokkaido. He spots several other big cities from northern prefectures. The residence has to be somewhere further north.

Konoha stays put on the sofa. “So you’re saying that this ‘vacation home’ is most likely some old house up on their ancestral land or something?”

“Exactly,” Oikawa answers. “Most likely not perfectly preserved from the past, but I don’t think the landscaping in the photo was just a modern tribute to old aesthetics. If it’s still there I’ll bet it’s genuine.”

“It makes sense,” Watari says. “The timeline of it, if this is an old house. It’s horrible but keeping and taming mutants used to be seen as sport, like a social status or a show of power. That they could still protect everyone from these big bad things like in the old days. Not everyone was like that, of course. But rich, influential humans could afford to mess around with mutants and get away with it easier. This can work if it’s true. It’s all definitely not legal.”

Keiji lets Watari’s words wash over him least they stick and begin to broil. He’s tired. Too tired to begin entertaining the anger that wants to bubble up in the pit of his stomach.

“I guess I’ll look at the bylaws again,” Watari sighs. “I hope it doesn’t happen, but if you run into someone while you’re on the site it could help to have the paperwork on hand to show that we’re a legitimate agency following standard policies and procedures. It won’t be hard to find the laws against monster ownership and pass it along to you, but we’re not the authorities, Akaashi. We have our own type of search warrant, but only if we have proper, circumstantial evidence that mistreatment is actually happening. I know I say this all the time, but it’s really true in this case. We’re going to be breaking the law. Again.”

“Says the enabling attorney himself,” Matsukawa comments.

Watari smiles, abashed but determined. “I know a lot of monsters can’t afford to go through the whole legal process… That’s why I admire Howl’s Moving Castle so much. You guys make getting help more accessible.”

“Does anyone know the real name of our agency?” Oikawa laments.

“You’ve helped a lot in your own way, Watari,” Akaashi says, fixing the angle of the webcam onto himself. “At most I may be penalized for trespassing into a private residence, maybe breaking and entering depending on what the house itself looks like, but that’s all. It’s nothing to worry about. None of us want you getting into any trouble.”

Watari looks uncomfortable at the thought. “I would get fired the second I stepped into the office if I did.”

“Name besmirched forever, turned away from every other law firm in the city, your resume torn up right in front of you by the interviewer,” Matsukawa expands with low, even drama. “The secretary spills her scalding hot coffee on you on the way out.”

“Stop,” Watari laughs. “You’ll jinx it.”

Konoha, who has been uncharacteristically quiet even as a self-proclaimed observer, speaks up. “So we’re doing this?”

“Most likely,” Keiji murmurs, pulling up an email to send the url to himself. It’s signed in to Matsukawa’s email but he’s sitting right there and doesn’t protest when Keiji doesn’t bother signing out.

“We don’t know who these people are, where this monster’s been smuggled off to, with what conditions he’s being held under, what kind of place Akaashi’ll be stepping into, how much surveillance there might be... With hardly any actual information, we’re gonna let him go gods knows where without backup?”

“You’re my backup, Konoha.”

“Last I checked I couldn’t teleport to other places through the water too.”

“We have a procedure,” Keiji replies, turning to study Konoha’s face to find their lips downturned, a glimmer of something tight and worried in their eyes. “The same one as always.”

“Yeah, except this place could be out in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the country for all we know, and the comm got water damaged the last time you used the lake. Remember? When you decided to solo it anyway and went dark for hours?”

“I know I should have come back then, but we were pressed for time and I had a good chance to look around. It worked out fine in the end.”

“Look, I know you have this huge thing for saving people and your sense of justice is fucking beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but you have to think about the risks more before storming into a place. If things go sideways because you’re too busy bumrushing it then you’re putting the client at risk too.”

 “I understand that, but risks are part of the deal. We’ll be using better equipment this time too-”

“Fuck the equipment, Akaashi, that’s not what I’m worried about!”

“Now, now,” Oikawa croons, standing with a pacifying wiggle of both hands. “Let’s calm down. I understand your concern, Konoha-san, but we aren’t going to hop into this right away. We’ll be careful. We’ll take the proper steps to make sure Keiji-kun gets as much information and protection as possible before he goes to scout the place. Mattsun’s figured out a way around that pesky waterproofing problem, hasn’t he?”

Matsukawa shrugs one shoulder. “I’ve got a few new charms.”

“Reassuring,” Konoha says.

“He doesn’t brag, but he’s perfectly good at what he does. Mattsun will take a look at the tech and make sure it survives the trip. Watacchi is handling paperwork. I’ll dig up whatever I can find about the family. Keiji-kun will run reconnaissance when all of that is ready, and then you’ll act as his support. Trust us, Konoha-san,” Oikawa says in a poignant reflection of Keiji’s earlier words. “We’ll take care of him.”

Konoha looks half appeased and half riotous, falling into a steely silence. It lasts for too long, dashing Keiji’s mood even further.

“Well,” Matsukawa drawls, cracking the silence. “I only think my lame PowerPoint will spoil the meeting even more. How about you two cut out early and talk things out? We won’t be going through with any of this without you anyway.”

“Of course.” Keiji says. He scoops up his tablet and heads for the door. He has to wait once he reaches it, Konoha and Oikawa hanging back to talk about something. This time Keiji doesn’t tune in, too put off by Konoha's apparent lack of support. Had a measure of uncertainty ever stopped Keiji from doing the right thing before? Had it ever stopped Konoha from going in 100% before?

Eventually Oikawa comes over and bumps shoulders with him. Keiji doesn't quite balk away from the contact, but one corner of his mouth does curl in distaste. “My, you’re something when you’re angry. You become an open book. They’re just worried about you. You do have a tendency of running off to climb towers and save hapless princesses from their evil stepmothers.”

“Maybe if evil stepmothers didn’t exist,” Keiji says.

Oikawa murmurs soft agreement and gives one more nudge. “Hear them out. I’ll keep you posted on the family thing, okay?”

“Thank you.”

Konoha slinks over, quiet, and Oikawa commands the door open with a deft flick of the wrist. He sees them both out with a cheery wave, snaps, and leaves them to their own devices on the other side.

Keiji trudges into the living area, chucks his tablet down, and then bodily throws himself down as well, nearly crushing the device. It’s a hard edge against his back but he does nothing to resettle himself.

“I didn’t mean to put you on the spot like that,” Konoha says as soon as they’ve trudged over. They’re still wearing curves, lips pursed, long hair swishing as they lean over the back of the couch to give Keiji’s side a light jab. “I just have a feeling. It all sounds more risky than it should be.”

And Keiji can’t keep the edges refined anymore. He lets them fray because this is Konoha and they can weather the moments when his honesty turns a little cutting, when the calm veneer of his voice is just that – thin, flimsy, tacked to the ground by a single bending nail. Eloquence falls by the wayside when he’s like this, turning everything nasty, brutish, and short. “This is what we do. That’s what I’m here for. To take the risks. That’s what recon is. Even if this all turns out to be a bullshit lead, if you think I’m going to leave this monster out there after hearing what could be happening-”

“I know that. Fuck, I know you’re set on this, okay? Trying to talk you down when you’re up in arms is impossible.”

“Then what is it?” Keiji peels away the arm he’d thrown over his eyes, mouth set in a frown, the earlier heat already dissipating. He’s not made for long, high strung emotions; his heart seeks out equilibrium wherever it can be found, even at the cost of subsuming his own flaring pride. Those frothing surges of emotions haunt and embarrass him later on when he’s coasting in intertidal peace.  “You have to tell me or else I’ll never know what I did wrong.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I just… No one else in there knows what using your powers is like for you. And then to go from that into some total unknown?”

“Oh,” Keiji breathes, anger falling away as quickly as it swept in.

“But I can’t tell you what to do like that.” Konoha sighs deeply, rakes a hand through their hair, and then comes around and settles onto their haunches beside the couch. They look at each other for a second before Konoha shakes their head, smiling small. “Of course I’m with you. You’re a selfless one and I love you for it.”

Keiji searches Konoha’s face for signs of weak appeasement. Finding nothing but genuineness, he mimics their slow smile. “Your face is turning a little red.”

“One day you’re gonna have to say it back, you smartass,” they laugh, pinch Keiji’s cheek, then stand and move away.

“Konoha,” Keiji calls after a minute. A hummed acknowledgement floats from somewhere in the room.

Keiji inhales, exhales, everything already forgiven. Water beneath the bridge, as they say.

“Feel free to stay over tonight.”

He rests well that night and wakes sweltering, swathed with too many tails and an arm banded securely about his middle. The coloring of Konoha’s fur is several shades paler than their hair, silken even in the paltry sunlight seeping in through the window, ear tips brushed a tawny gold. Streaks of red paint the corners of their eyes.

Keiji pets their hair in a way Konoha would balk at if awake, but in their sleep they bury their nose against his throat, lax and content.

With lazy simplicity Keiji thinks, I love you too.

Everything else falls into place within the next week.

Keiji meets with Bokuto once more to ask a handful of follow-up questions. Whether the house would look the same as it did in the past (yep), if he should expect heavy security (probably not, it’s supposed to be a getaway?), more about what the monster looks like (‘winged’ is all that Bokuto can remember with certainty). He lets Bokuto talk freely, unguided, and from the mad rush he gushes out plucks up any small details that could be of use later on.

It’s still not much to go by, but by the time they part ways they’re both feeling more confident in the little mission.

Oikawa comes up mostly empty on relevant family history but sends a bombardment of links to articles on bird-like monsters: yasuzume, itsumade, strix, tengu, onmoraki, harpy. He links Keiji to talks on genetic mutation, physical manifestations of flight, non-physical manifestations of flight - so much material that he gets a headache sifting through it all within a few short days.

At night his dreams are tainted by macabre manifestations of everything he reads about. They look like moving woodblock prints composed of beautiful colors and vivid movement. Frenetic, chaotic, horrible; refined.

No point in hiding our monstrosity if that’s what we are, Konoha would say. We shouldn’t want to be anything but what we are.

Matsukawa drops by with a nondescript duffle bag full of charmed equipment. Konoha helps him whittle everything down to the bare necessities of what he’ll definitely need, and Keiji has a nicely stuffed backpack ready by the end of the day.

The finishing touches are the documents that Watari sends over, all fresh and official; hidden when packed into sealed envelopes, but no less ready for the moment when Keiji might need to wave it into some wayward bigot’s face to prove that they were, within the constructs of law, acting a bigot.

They drive out to the lake on a warm weekday night, Konoha behind the wheel with the radio turned up loud between them, belting out lyrics to cover up the growing anticipation lighting up Keiji’s nerves.

Konoha says that Keiji should really sing more. That he has a voice as limpid as a skylark’s.

The trip drags on as much as it flashes by in the blink of an eye. They pull into an empty parking lot, engine purring and ticking into silence. Without the music blaring quietude cuts through the air like a blade, coiling thickly upon his shoulders.

Keiji forces his fingers to untwine and grasp the door handle.

Together they lug everything out of the trunk and trudge into the thin foliage ringing the lake. Konoha leads the way through the murky nature, their tails swishing a constant, hypnotic rhythm that’s easy for Keiji to follow. Even in the poor moonlight he only stumbles twice over a jumble of underbrush.

Neither of them are sure whether the comm will be in range, but Keiji tucks the little earpiece into his ear anyway, securing it as snugly as possible. He’s checked his pack a half dozen times already but absentmindedly does it again while standing near the placid lakeshore, listening to its constant whispering.

Konoha comes over after they finish setting up, batting away a cloud of mosquitoes.

“I’ll be here when you get back. Stay safe.”

“You too.”

Konoha gives that curling smile that’s more a smirk than anything else and picks their way back to their spot. They don’t embrace. Keiji is wildly grateful for it. He doesn’t think his nerves could take it.

He makes sure his bag is secure on his back and wades into the water, cautious - he’s been a natural swimmer for as long as he can remember, long enough to respect any body of water. In the moonlight the water dapples in cloying, liquid patches of quicksilver. He walks until the cold waves gentle over his chest and tickle at his throat, and then the bottom suddenly drops out entirely, leaving him to tread afloat.

He doesn’t give the rising panic enough time to sink in.

Steeling himself, he dunks his head underwater and swims down, down, down until the moonlight is just faint twinkle above and that familiar, trapped feeling clenches around his ribcage. Tight pressure begins to rise in the center of his chest the longer he holds his breath.

He hates this part.

The part where he has to go against every baser human instinct that tells him to keep his mouth clamped tightly closed instead of opening it to inhale.

The water burns its way down his throat and into his lungs. A ruthless, ferocious singe like a swathe of trees caught in a brushfire. He coughs, bubbles bursting around him, all the trapped pockets of air pushed out of his chest until there’s barely a pindrop left. At some point, underneath all the panic and drowning and trying to hold an image of the little koi pond tightly in his mind, it starts to feel normal. Like at the tail end of something horrible happening when you just give up the struggle and accept it, and it feels great, it feels like the coming of fate. Something he should be doing all the time instead of once every blue moon.

The cold water, the endlessness of it above and below him, the numbness biting at his fingertips which makes him feel part and parcel of it all, the way the currents carry him, buoys him, breaks him down into a million tiny pieces and then gurgles him back up on the other side, smashed against the rocks like barnacles stuck to a cliff.

It never takes very long, the whole journey of being yanked from point a to point b, but when he finally breaks above the water’s surface he’s shaking and gasping, spitting up all the water he’d just invited in. It scrapes and burns on the way up just as much as it did on the way down, his eyes watering hotly with the effort to stay quiet as he coughs all the water from his lungs, flopped over the edge of the pond.

He’s dizzy, disorientated, hurt, yet somehow sure that he’s made it to the right place.

A big, speckled koi fish calmly grazes against his calf. A greeting from a kindred spirit.

“Thank you,” he rasps, heaving himself up and over the pond.

He’s still atremble once he’s out, steps as wobbly as the worst case of sea legs, but he orientates himself back to solid ground quickly.

“You can’t hear me at all, can you?” He tries, testing the comm. Silence greets him. Figures, he thinks, pocketing the little device. No going back now. He’ll weather the fallout later.

It’s dark and quiet. That deep, intimate quiet that Keiji only knows from old memories and the occasional trip out to the boonies where the air is clean and undisturbed by a constant assault of light and noise pollution. More stars than he’s ever seen before smears across the sky, dazzling when paired with the chunk of waning moon hanging in the middle of it. Keiji takes the sight in with an appreciative sweep, and then he focuses on the task at hand.

The first thing he notices as he walks along the perimeter, looking for cameras or people or security and finding nothing at all, is that the place is huge. The main house is a big, posthumous shadow in the middle. The garden around it spacious. His feet nearly crunches over the neat swirls of a rock garden before he spots it and freezes mid-step. Stepping around it, he finds a veritable grove of flowering bushes and little trees. Past that is an ocean of grass, soft and springy.

If he leaves footprints here it can’t be helped, but when he glances back the trampled down blades aren’t too noticeable. At least not at night. Hopefully the grasses will spring back up before anyone notices.

He’s not come across a single camera, not another soul, not one sign that anyone is even here other than how well-kept the place is. It’s definitely not abandoned.

It’s beginning to unnerve him. Everything is pristine, pretty, wealthy, but there’s no one and nothing around.

At least not until he turns his attention away from the wall, which only seems to be an unbelievably unsecured wall, and ventures closer to the home itself.

The house is all flung open sliding doors and gauzy paper screens, allowing the rare breezes to enter in through the rooms and offer a stunning view of the mountains and gardens while reclined on the tatami mats or along the wooden walkways. Nothing but a single light on an upper floor is lit.

From the darkness he can just make out a large structure standing close to one of the entrances. Thinking it sorely out of place, he steps nearer. It’s big and draped in a heavy black cloth reminiscent of an artist’s covered sculpture hidden away from prying eyes, or like a… His approach stutters when a different image floats into his mind, one that has a dreadful feeling lurching in his stomach. Like a veiled bird’s cage. The silhouette matches: domed at the top, flat on the bottom. Even from a distance he can see the slight dips where the fabric falls between the curved ribs of its bars. 

When he ventures close enough Keiji doesn’t drag it out. He grabs a fistful of the cloth and yanks it away with a powerful tug. The fabric slinks to the ground. Revealed is a cage, and inside that a person who jolts at the intrusion.

Wings.

They’re the first things that Keiji notices; huge, sleek wings arching from the monster’s back, dominating even when tucked in close to his body. They look large enough that they could graze the ground when the monster stands at full height and buffet against the cage if spread to even half their width. The feathers are pure black, no speckle or spot lighter than the color of ink, so dark that they nearly melt into the night itself if not for the slight sheen they emit as moonlight slides over the fluttering feathers. Like the shimmer of oil. The wings flare a little. It’s a startled movement, reminding Keiji of city birds rustling their wings when given a shock. His gaze is wide-eyed and blinking to match, lips parted but silent, his eyes and hair just as black as his wings. Even the plain yukata covering his body is a deep gray color to match the rest.

The only hint of lightness on the monster is his very skin, pale and bared from shoulder to sternum where the fabric has been pushed down.

“You’re new,” the monster starts, Keiji’s eyes snapping up. “And early, I think.”

“You were expecting someone?” That sends a tendril of alarm through him. Keiji nearly twists to check over his shoulder for signs of company, refraining the movement only to a shift of weight from one foot to the other. He came prepared for one but a confrontation is the last thing that he wants so early into his foray.

“I…” The rest falls away, the monster’s pinched mouth looking disinclined to say anything else. After a minute it becomes apparent that nothing more will be given. Keiji takes it upon himself to fill the lull, hoping that this taciturnity isn’t a permanent disposition.

“This isn’t what I wanted to find,” he says, mostly to himself. It’s not marvel coating his tongue, but disbelief and the rumbling beginnings of anger boiling up his blood. He has to keep his head. He wasn’t sure what he would find here, but this?  “Are you okay?”

“Are you?” The monster retorts.

Keiji just laughs amazement, shakes his head, nods and takes a step sideways to better see between the bars, feeling the other’s eyes track the movement.

Keiji has done this before. Suspicion is a normal response to being approached by a stranger who knew more than they should. All he needs to do is to lead the conversation in a direction that teases out trust all while confirming the information that was given him by his source, which is to say he’ll talk and appease until the monster opens up because he’s good at that and he needs to learn what’s going on before he finds himself cresting too high with discontent.

The only issue, as always, is time and that vague sense of insecurity that comes with trespassing into an unknown place, a feeling that wasn’t helped by the earlier comment of a possible visitor.

“You said I was early. Are you expecting someone within the next, I don’t know… The next hour or two?”

“No.”

Good enough. It was still too short of a time frame to look around a place as large as this but it was better than nothing. “This is the Bokuto family’s place, isn’t it? Their vacation home?”

“Yes. But you don’t work for them,” the monster answers, taking in Keiji’s outfit, the hair wet and curling on his forehead, everything still dripping water to the ground. He looks twice as suspicious now, glancing off to the side while trying to shrug up his yukata. It merely slouches down again, blocked by the massive wings on his back. As he shifts Keiji can see that some feathers encroach upon his skin as well, decorating the sides of his neck with small, spindly feathers that disappear down his unseen shoulder blades. “I’m sorry if I’m being difficult. Is this… Some kind of-”

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Keiji carefully interjects, sinking down into a crouch so they can be on the same eye level. Those eyes were grabbing when aimed at him like that. Dark and striking. He thinks he understands it when people describe someone’s features as simply ‘pleasing’ now. Not ‘hot’ or ‘sexy’, just… pleasing. “I understand your hesitation. You don’t know me. I’ve come out of nowhere and crawled out of your little pond-

“You crawled out of my pond?”

“Well, yes,” Keiji admits, some small amount of ease sliding into place at the other’s open shock. “But I don’t work for the Bokuto family or anyone connected to them. I hadn’t even heard that name until a few days ago. I only found out about you through someone who told me how you have been kept here for years, and who wants to see you get out. I admit that my source does have a relationship with the Bokutos but I can promise you that they’re not after anything bad, and that they want nothing but to help you. I’m here to do that.”

“To help me,” says the monster. “To free me?”

Keiji nods, uncertainty blooming in his chest at the lack enthusiasm in that flat response. He never expects gratuitous displays of eagerness or gratitude, especially if the request came from someone else rather than from the mouth of the client themselves, but he was beginning to get the feeling that, if asked, this one might outright reject an offer for help without him learning enough to know why.

“That’s… some suggestion.”

“It’s yours to take or leave. I won’t be that person who forces someone else’s decision on you, but I figured you don’t get many offers like this every day so I came to you to give it. If you want it I’ll do my best to help. If you say no I’ll go back the way I came.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Keiji promises, reaching around to unstrap a water bottle from his bag. He offers it up. “Although I want to help you in whatever way I can.”

The monster takes the bottle and holds onto it, eyes half-lidded and blinking dazedly. He must be letting the proposition sink in. Or maybe he was disorientated? That cloth looked extremely opaque. Definitely thick enough to block out the weak silver moonlight bathing the space, thick enough to choke out a good amount of sunlight too during the daytime, and maybe even enough to muffle the gentle sounds that came wafting in from the mountains. Had he been there long? There was a word for that. To describe being stuck without light and sound and company.

Sendep.

He almost hears it in Konoha’s voice too, when they were hyped up and curled around one of those big psychology books they loved. Sensory deprivation. It was an experience that some people willingly put themselves through in small doses to get some sort of calming out-of-body experience, but that kind of treatment only lasted an hour or two at most. Konoha said they wanted to try one of those deprivation tanks at least once in their life. Keiji thinks it sounds like an absolute horror dredged up from the depths of his own nightmares.

Too much exposure to nothing has to mess with one’s mind, didn’t it? That was why solitary confinement was a punishment meted out to those already getting punished, and why Keiji can’t think of this arrangement as anything but mistreatment.

And the cage is locked.

Anger washes over him again just thinking about it. His emotions always take him in a full crescendo, subsume everything else to a rogue wave of nothing but heat and dismay scorching up his heart. He frays, his thoughts scatter with it, he’s distantly aware of the monster staring at him, but then the swell passes after a minute, a wild needle jump on an otherwise calm seismic monitor, and he has possession of himself again. He can do this. He has to save himself later.

It’s an old fashioned lock, big and ornate and heavy when Keiji inspects the keyhole. The opening is wide. Fashioned for a skeleton key, most likely, which could mean it was a real antique. Maybe these people thought an old-blooded monster was an antique too. Something pretty to show off just as Bokuto suggested.

Keiji twists his bag around and unzips the front pocket, relieved to find the inside wholly dry. He takes out a rolled case and unbinds it, spreading it flat on the ground. Skimming over the array of tools, he plucks out a pair of gloves, a tension wrench, and short hook that looks to be the right size. The gloves go on first. Inserting the wrench, he twists it left, and then inserts the short hook and settles into picking the lock.

After a moment of utter silence save the clinking of metal, Keiji realizes his mistake.

“Shit,” he curses, dropping the hook. He reaches a hand through the bars. “Even I wouldn’t drink that if I were you. I know it’s safe and I promise that I haven’t put anything in it, but let me taste test it for you anyway.”

The monster glances at Keiji’s hand and then returns the water bottle to it, careful not to let his fingers brush Keiji’s. Unoffended, Keiji twists off the lid, brings the bottle to his own lips, and takes two very obvious gulps, liquid tickling down his throat, the monster’s gaze fixed on him like a brand. He wipes his mouth when done, offering the bottle back. “Wait a few more minutes to see if anything kicks it if you'd like. I’ll be fine if you do. Is it dangerous for you for me to be here? Will you get in trouble?”

“I’m not sure.” He doesn’t wait longer than a hesitant second before sipping from the bottle. Keiji celebrates with an inward pat on the back. Small victories. “I haven’t had an uninvited guest like this before. But I wouldn’t get caught if I were you.”

“That is the plan. This isn’t about me though. I’m here for you. If you say you don’t need any help and get in trouble after I turn around and leave that will be on me, not you, and it wouldn't be fair.”

“That won’t happen. Like I said, someone is only supposed to come by later to let me out. A little after sunrise, they said. No one but me lives here year around so there’s never much happening.”

“Right,” Keiji says, fingers clenching hard around the tools. He stops, takes a steadying breath, reclaims his tools and gets back to work, having to start all over again.

“Are you really okay?” The monster asks, Keiji amused by how their roles should most definitely be reversed. He nods in answer.

“Your eyes are very green,” the monster says next with interest. Keiji thinks of stories about ravens stealing shiny baubles away for their hoards. He knows it’s a myth. Wild ravens don’t cache random trinkets into piles when they would be of absolutely no use to them. They merely toy with and check out objects just as a human might inspect something to determine whether it was merely a curio or a real threat. They do cache food, he knows – he has lived among the raucous Tokyo ravens for most of his life and has watched them tear apart anything from abandoned french fries to seeds to dead insects, spiriting them away and trailing pieces in their wake. But the story of ravens being attracted shiny things? No. It was a survival instinct like any other. 

But then myths and monsters went hand in hand, and the way that his eyes were being examined was certainly disconcerting. If he were less focused he might start sweating. As it were, he does shift under all of the attention.

And Keiji thought living with a kitsune had made him less susceptible to the charisma and gravitas of old bloods.

“My eyes? It’s…  They’re how they’ve always been.”

“Are you Japanese?”

“Yes. I’m also mixed.”

“That explains it.”

“It does,” Keiji answers, succinct in his concentration, wiggling the hook a fraction higher. It’s sturdy because of its age but it has a much simpler mechanism than the sleek locks he’s had to break in the past. It won’t take long to finish. The other falls quiet. Keiji is grateful for it. Answering for his heritage and all the fervid wheres and whats that comes along with the inquiry has irked Keiji since childhood if only for how repetitive it all became over a lifetime, as if being externally different in such an inconsequential way allowed others to harass him with questions that made him feel less than. His powers he could easily keep secret, but his looks? It was always either his eyes or his skin tone, and it didn’t help that people sometimes outed monsters just by pointing fingers at their often unique coloring.

Humans can be cruel, baby, his mother would always say, her wisdom washed out by the rush of seafoam that they would walk hand in hand through, white and bubbling and not yet frightening. Don’t let yourself get eaten up by them.

Back then he sometimes hated the bright burn of her emerald eyes too. Resented how she passed them on to him in a shade brilliant enough to be picked apart by others for being so different from his schoolmates.

Now, he loves the resemblance.

Finish this already.

The chastisement works. A second later the lock clicks open. Keiji works it free and grabs a small cloth, setting the lock on the ground atop of it to keep it clean. Satisfied, he opens the cage’s door. It doesn’t creak or stick, well-maintained like everything else here seemed to be.

The monster watches the door open but other than standing up, careful like someone who’s gotten pins and needles from sitting for too long, doesn’t immediately move to leave.

“Are you hurt? I know some first aid. I have some things in my bag if you need anything.”

The monster grips at a bar, wings resettling. “No offense, but I’m still not sure if I can trust you.”

“None taken.” Keiji bites the inside of his lip, wondering how much time has passed already. “Let me introduce myself properly then?”

The monster nods.

“My name is Akaashi Keiji. I’ve come from Tokyo but I’m originally from a tiny seaside town in the middle of nowhere. You might not be able to tell by looking, but I am also a monster. I traveled here through a lake to reach your pond.”

“Oh,” he breathes. “You look so human that I really couldn’t tell. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen another monster without massive wings or horns or something else obviously telling.” The monster smiles and it dawns nicely on his face, the curl of his lips lifting his entire demeanor like it was made for the quiet, gentle laugh he gives rather than the guardedness from before. “My name is Ennoshita Chikara. It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Ennoshita-san. And that happens a lot. I’ve spent my whole life passing for human.”

“You would want that?”

Keiji shrugs. “I didn’t wake up one day thinking ‘I’m going to be a human today’. It just happened while I was growing up.”

“I know I have no hope of passing so maybe I just don’t understand the appeal of it since it’s never been more than a fantasy to me, but it seems so… Uncomfortable. Ah. …I forgot you said you were mixed. I just figured out what you meant by it.”

Keiji tilts his head. That was actually an astute deduction. Most still assumed he meant he was half-Japanese and half-foreign whenever he said he was mixed, even if they were aware that he had powers. Maybe it was more the pattern of humans to think of ethnicity first.

“Saying all of that just now was probably really rude of me,” Ennoshita continues, scritching the side of his neck.

“Not really.” Keiji brushes the concern away, far from bothered. “You’re being rather kind about it, actually.”

Ennoshita doesn’t look very convinced, but then he smiles again. Keiji feels an absurd urge to compliment it. Ennoshita has that lived-in grace, the ability to make the most everyday gestures turn captivating. Keiji thinks he’s staring a little anyway, so perhaps it’s a moot point.

“Besides, I think passing is much more common among people like me who are half human. If I may ask, how long have you been here?”

“In here? Not too long. Here?” Ennoshita gestures more widely to the property beyond the cage. “Much longer, but not the whole time that I’ve been with the family.”

“Have you lived in a lot of different places with them then?”

“A few.”

“Do you travel throughout the year? To see the village down the road or do things on your own?” He has no idea whether there was a village down the road, but that’s beside the point. He’s hoping for a yes or an of course.

Ennoshita pauses. Slowly, he shakes his head.

So he must stay on the property almost all the time. Keiji nods, aware that pressing for details in such a fastidious way is souring the good mood he’s only just helped to create. Usually he doesn’t mind talking just to talk – it was his own preference too, to chat with someone casually without having to keep all these tedious checklists in mind. But he’s on his own here, he can’t mess up, and dawn isn’t that far away when he still needs to sweep the entire place on his own, make sure he’s not obvious about it, and ensure that Ennoshita is really, truly okay. He pushes his questions a little further.

“How long have you been living as the… property of the Bokuto family?”

Ennoshita doesn’t bat an eyelash at the label, and Keiji definitely does not feel good about that. The next words come as an even greater surprise.

“It must be close a century. I’m with the great grandchild now.”

Keiji stares, speechless.

It confirms a nagging suspicion which had been growing from the start – that Ennoshita has largely accepted his captivity, that he’s been stuck for so long that this sense of contentedness he emits has come at the price of freedom, or, possibly the most worrying thought, that he was genuinely fine with his life and status here, kept as something less than equal. And sheltered too. Keiji has no doubt that Ennoshita is intelligent from the words they’ve exchanged so far, but it was all too possible that he has been kept from learning about all the progress that has been made to better the lives of monsterkind in order to keep him content with this small world he’s been given, which makes the situation thrice more appalling.

One hundred years ago the masses probably thought taking monsters and degrading them to curiosities was a mostly acceptable practice. Now, Keiji is absolutely disgusted.

With the great grandchild now, he said. That makes him sound like some passed down heirloom.

“You must be young,” Ennoshita says. “You look horrified by what I just said.”

“Who wouldn’t be? It’s…”

His speechlessness seems to rouse Ennoshita. He tilts forward with a focused gaze, although his voice stays level. “The second you came here you’ve been making all these assumptions based only on a few pieces of information and fitting them to what you think is happening. Ask me instead, if you could.”

“I'm... sorry. You’re right,” Keiji concedes. He is right. It’s humbling. Keiji knows he’s right and wishes he could approach everything with a perfectly objective mindset, professionally, as he very well should, as everyone always thinks he does, but the mistreatment all seems so apparent.

“This is barbaric, isn’t it?” Keiji plainly retorts, feeling selfish for pressing the topic but finding Ennoshita’s magnanimity confusing. “To be kept here against your will like this? Caged and locked, even.”

“It isn’t against my will,” Ennoshita answers. “Akaashi. I know how this looks and all I can say is that you’ve caught me at a bad time. I came into this willingly because I couldn’t handle something that I did in the past and I... I was taken in,” he finishes. It doesn’t sound what he’d been intending to say at first. Keiji stays quiet, waiting for the rest. “Not by force, but because they wanted to help. That was rare back then, getting help from a human who meant it, especially for a demon who really didn’t deserve it.”

Demon. That’s it. Keiji grasps onto the word, needing to distance himself, to reclaim an undisturbed flow without getting stuck on a jarring thought or two. A river which parts around an intrusion; fractiously at first, smooth and accepting over time.

“You’re karasu-tengu?”

“I am.”

“I did some guesswork on what you might be before coming here. Your nose looks normal to me.”

Bemusement crests onto Ennoshita’s face, brows raised, but soft around the edges, like he’s grasping for lightness as much as Keiji is. “Well, I have this magic fan, you see, which can shrink or grow noses however long I’d like them to be with just a flick of the wrist. I would say it has its perks.”

Keiji huffs a breath of amusement despite himself, recognizing the premise of Tengu no Hauchiwa that he’d skimmed through just the other day when he got bored of all the dry facts. The joke is a subtle one, easy to fall victim to if one misses the reference entirely – just the sort that he likes to entertain. It feels like a shared secret when it has Ennoshita smiling like that, all dry humor and a spark of interest in his eyes.

“You’ll have to show that to me later then so I can see how it works.”

“Your nose looks fine from over here, but it isn’t my place to question cosmetic choices.”

 “I always thought tengu were just spirits, not demons?”

“I guess the definition can change. The word demon doesn’t bother me much.”

Keiji digests that with a grain of salt. Some demons had terrible reputations even within the monster community. Keiji has never bothered listening to the noise. The one before him strikes him as mild-mannered, quiet now with some heavy, lingering regret that Keiji could never hope to parse.

Keiji doesn’t ask ‘What did you do to want to be here?’ or assert that one good deed and gratitude shouldn’t have turned into this, into a century of restrained living. As much as it irks him, those judgments aren’t his to make. He takes a moment to unwind the tight knot of that has formed in his chest, lets it dissipate back down to the bottom of the trenches, and then speaks up.

“Ennoshita-san,” he says, waiting until the other lifts his eyes. “I would prefer it if we could talk without these bars between us.”

“I’m really supposed to stay in here until morning. I know how that sounds-”

“I don’t care how it sounds.” Ennoshita freezes and Keiji feels horrible for causing the reaction. That he likely came off as pushy or high-minded the entire time. “What I mean is that I care about your well-being first and foremost. I just want talk to you face-to-face, like normal. From now on I’ll take your word for everything that you tell me.”

Ennoshita slackens, voice tinged with relief. “Thank you.”

“I’ve been being pointlessly difficult with you,” Keiji retorts, hearing Ennoshita’s huffed laugh for the wordless agreement that it was. “Come on out.”

Ennoshita does, touching Keiji’s offered arm for balance like it was his due. A quick, warm brush of fingers which vanishes seconds later as Ennoshita steps out on bare feet that brush silently over the grass, wings flaring open around a languid stretch. They’re massive and elegant, catching the night air and puffing it back in small flutters before tucking back in.

Ennoshita rolls his neck, reaches up to scratch primly at the arch of a wing, and when he glances over a shoulder at Keiji it’s with a smile that’s at once the same and completely different from the ones before. The angle of his mouth slants up with more surety, his posture loose and wholly self-possessed.

“I’m guessing that you want the grand tour?”

The residence is as much of a peaceful paradise as the photos suggested. There are no cameras, no security system, no prison barbs or grated windows. There is no one within the house, no guards immediately outside the wall. Ennoshita mentions a guardhouse that sits down the road but their job stays over there. They never breach the wall either. The employees who do come in to bring groceries or do maintenance don't overstay their welcome.

He says there’s plumbing and electricity but no internet or cable, a neglected television somewhere in the place, and not many other modern appliances, which suits him just fine since he prefers reading, radio, and working by hand anyway. Keiji has gotten so used to the urban monsters of Tokyo that he forgets how a lot of the older ones are perfectly content to live like this, without the hustle and bustle or technology that progresses in startling leaps and bounds almost every year now.

The privacy is whole and consummate.

The house looks old fashioned. Calm, serene, and traditional until Ennoshita leads him inside, Keiji shedding his shoes on the step up, and it turns out not at all what he expected.

Much of the inside is dominated by a second garden boxed into the middle, bordered by a colonnade of thin white pillars that join in arches, greenery encroaching upon everything.

 “This… doesn’t look very Japanese.” Keiji turns a slow circle, staring at the bubbling fountain in the center of the space made of pale stone and cascading pieces, forming a happy little waterfall. Around the fountain are neat sections of grass shorn short and clearly well taken care of with how vibrantly green it is.

He can’t place any of the architecture other than the obviously Roman influences. A thought hits him. “We are still in Japan, aren't we?”

“What? Oh. Yes, we are, I do know that much.” Ennoshita brushes aside the overflowing fronds of a hanging plant. They’re so thick that the dangling leaves form a curtain, reminding Keiji of his grandmother’s beaded partition that hangs between the kitchen and dining room. These are unlike the clatter of wooden beads he liked to race through as a kid. The leaves rustle quiet when they part through, offering just a whiff of fragrance. “The designer just likes her exoticism. It’s eclectic, but pretty,” Ennoshita explains while gesturing to the enclosure. “This was fashioned in the style of paradise gardens, I think, although I couldn’t tell you which region she was trying to mimic or how accurate all of it is. I think she mentioned something Ottoman once, or maybe Persian, but then she went on a tangent about garden culture and I tuned the rest out. If... this is at all interesting for you to hear.”

“It is.”

“I’m sorry if I start to ramble. I… haven’t had a conversation partner in a while.”

“That’s only becoming a little apparent now that you’ve said it.”

“You are so straightforward,” Ennoshita says, without accusation. Keiji enjoys that.

Ennoshita turns into a narrow stairway that Keiji only notices when it’s upon them. He hesitates below, sure that the rooms upstairs must be personal quarters, but Ennoshita glances over his shoulder in a clear invitation before continuing up.

So Keiji follows, watching the way Ennoshita’s wings against brush the walls and wondering if it causes any discomfort. How far the nerve endings go in a wing. There’s light filtering in from above, the one he must have spotted earlier. It makes it easier to visibly trace the small feathers on Ennoshita's shoulder blades and watch them shift with the movement of his steps. The yukata has little details he couldn’t see before. Patterns worked through the fabric with slightly darker thread so that you have to strain to see it. It’s all still a nice contrast against his skin.

“You can see that there’s not much to free me from?” Keiji looks up, caught looking again and embarrassed for it this time, to see Ennoshita’s gaze already on him as he mounts the last step. “That I’m living well and aren’t being coerced into staying here?”

“It seems so.” He’s led into a small room with a window that overlooks the garden, koi pond, and cage. The peaks of a mountain throw their ridged teeth up in the distance, everything sprinkled with starlight. The room itself is sparsely decorated, everything hidden in either the big tansu cabinet or behind the sliding door of a closet, a spot for a charcoal burning stove in the middle. It’s a simply used living space, not a room left purposefully barren as an act of neglect.

One last wrinkle to smooth out, though. “My source mentioned something called a ‘display’.”

“Oh, those. They’re… exactly what they sound like, but they don’t happen all the time. Once a year at most. And it’s not an unkind thing. I can see how someone could get the wrong impression after seeing only that. I’m not being poked or prodded, just… looked at, if they’ve not seen me before.”

“That still worries me. It’s a form of degradation to be shown off to humans by other humans, especially at a gathering that makes it sound like you’re just a spectacle or another round of entertainment. Even if it has never escalated from a bit of objectification, no one should have that power over you.”

“Even if I willingly gave it up? It’s an arrangement, not abuse. I can tell you’ve been thinking that the whole time. I’m allowed all of this and barely need to do anything for it. I don’t know how it is in Tokyo now, but an exchange like this feels completely fine to me, and I don't consider myself at all degraded.” Ennoshita pulls his gaze away from window and the alluring nightscape outside. “So, what are you here for?”

Nothing, apparently. Keiji doesn’t like the tension beginning to gather between them. He thinks that in any other situation talking to Ennoshita would be a very easy thing.

Why doesn’t he want more than this?

“I said I wouldn’t force a decision on you and that’s still true, Ennoshita-san. I’m glad that I came, but I can tell that you’re not looking for any help.”

To his surprise, Ennoshita doesn’t immediately agree with the statement. He hesitates very clearly, lip bitten, eyes darting out the window again. When he speaks it's measured, everything carefully constructed before being allowed to leave his tongue.

“If I’m allowed to do this at all, then… May I make a request?”

That’s certainly not the part of the standard procedure listed in Watari’s paperwork still stuffed in his bag, but Keiji has never wanted to agree to something so quickly in his life. He feels a tug of something in his heart, the beginnings of a good tailwind, and watches Ennoshita swing his gaze back to him.

"I'd like to hear whatever it is first."

“If you could come back one more time I would… I would greatly appreciate it. During the daytime.” Ennoshita takes a breath. “And if you could bring something nice with you, I would appreciate it even more.”

Relief swells through him and he agrees again, “I can do that”, knowing that this means Ennoshita isn’t so sure of the final decision that he wants to make after all. It’s enough of a possibility for now.

They part soon after forging the promise, Ennoshita saying he could lock himself back into his cage later because he wants to see how Keiji leaves through the little koi pond.

Keiji shows himself out, downstairs, and back into the garden. He picks up the tools he left by the cage, secures the water bottle onto his bag, and zips everything up tight.

The light from Ennoshita’s window is warm and yellow at his back. He risks a brief glance up at it, seeing Ennoshita back-lit and reposed against the window sill, one elbow propped up to hold his chin. They don’t wave to one another. He’s grateful for it.

He’s not sure if he could handle an official farewell.

He steps back into the pond and the ever-present fear waiting at the bottom of it.

With help from nighttime’s veil, Keiji prays that it looks a little bit less like he’s drowning himself.

He brings his 35mm film camera, the one that he’s kept since college. He doesn’t know why. It’s something nice, it’s semi-precious, fallen into disuse but not disrepair. It helped pull him through school on those nights when he would venture out, overstressed, feeling better only after filling a roll with whatever poignant things he could capture. It’s too important to risk getting water damaged but he has Matsukawa truss it up with a neat little spell anyway and tucks it into a half dozen plastic bags too, just in case, before zipping it into his bag.

He’s somehow much less bothered about bringing actual photos along, an old album that he grabs low off the dusty bottom bookshelf with one foot already out the front door.

It’s barely a week later when Konoha drives them both to the lake again, the windows rolled down to blow away the summer heat. Konoha is still slightly testy at Keiji’s repeat performance of going dark and not coming back right away, but they’re just as committed to this client as he is now. Yet another thing to be grateful for.

Konoha brings a picnic basket and a blanket this time, remarking that they have nothing better to do while waiting for Keiji to come back, saying “It sounds like it's not about right or wrong for this one. It’s just that a century of the same thing can get you used to a lot and have you thinking that it’s all you really need in life. Ask what he wants to see and do instead, and you might get a better answer.”

He takes the advice to heart, holding it as close as the image of the koi pond as water burns and chokes its way into his lungs. The panic never loses its potency. Each and every time he gives himself up to the whims of the water feels like the first, the last, a long overdue welcome that cascades through his body and leaves a scoured out husk in its wake.

Keiji bursts above the tepid pond quivering and sputtering out mouthfuls of water. His tongue tastes like silt. When he clenches his teeth together, jaw aching, there’s a crunched grind of dirt between them. He heaves in the shallows of the pond, shaking hard, the air he swallows down too harsh for how raw his throat aches.

Again the big, speckled koi fish grazes him like it’s greeting a long lost friend. Keiji laughs around his sore throat, dipping a hand in to let it nip at his fingers.

“I don’t think I will ever get used to seeing that.” A voice comes from above. Keiji looks up to see Ennoshita slowing to a stop beside the pond, smiling, all of it fully revealed beneath the brilliant sunlight. “You know, you look half crazed when you come out of the water laughing like that.”

And then he offers Keiji a hand up.

Keiji takes it, stumbling, leaving an unseemly splash of water down Ennoshita’s front when he can’t steady himself in time. Ennoshita brushes the incident off and drapes a towel around Keiji’s shoulders.

“You’re wearing a t-shirt and jeans,” he hears himself say, voice an ugly rasp. The cage is gone when he looks for it, the garden more beautiful than ever in the daytime.

“It is the twenty-first century. I’m ‘hip’.”

Keiji, finding his feet again and feeling better for the heat of the sun that dries his skin, says, “You sound like my dad after he finds a new word online.”

“And you really are straightforward. I think I’m meant to take that as an insult,” Ennoshita says, without insult.

Already it’s markedly different from their first meeting. Keiji’s instinct still has him on guard, a part of him wishing to look at the entire place again now that there is proper lighting for exploration, but he doesn’t quite want to seek out the bad things today either, worried that he might find them.

And Ennoshita is being easy. Rambling, just like he warned he would be, talking about everything but the reason why Keiji ever came in the first place. It’s the pleasant kind of babble, the sort you would seek out when lost in the middle of a forest and fall to your knees for. The kind of noise that has a clear, glittering brook at the source of it.

He’s immediately thrilled when Keiji pulls out his camera and shows him how to use it, what the buttons are, how to capture a picture, how one goes about developing film. Together they breeze through an entire roll while walking around the garden, and then Ennoshita spends an embarrassing amount of time browsing Keiji’s photo album picture by picture, eyes pausing over each one, mouth sometimes opening around a question or to ask the story behind a particular photo.

Ennoshita likes theatre. He loves plays. The live kind, though he hasn’t seen enough recorded performances to know if he’s missing out on something spectacular. He thinks he needs the audience right there with him though. Dozens of faces reacting to the plot being played out on stage, the collectiveness you feel when experiencing joy, shock, sadness, and more with a room full of strangers. He wouldn’t mind the blunders either, the dull shows mixed in with the ones that receive wild applause. He says that he sometimes writes in his free time.

“So all the time,” says Keiji, strolling in the shade of the colonnade. A smooth slide of feathers nearly makes him flinch when Ennoshita’s wing brushes over his bare arm as Ennoshita turns and gives him a look, already accustomed to suffering the pricks couched in Keiji’s sense of humor.

Ennoshita’s must run near the same vein though, for in the next moment he responds with a kind, concealed, “Almost as often as you vacation in nice summer homes that don't belong to you, perhaps.”

Fair, he thinks, amusement unfurling warmly in his chest, wondering what Konoha or Oikawa would make of his leisure after seeing the determination with which he initially came into this case. His mission is still there, yet sleeping dormant. The image of that locked and shrouded cage won’t disappear with the passing of a few days. He remembers what he wants to do, the offer of help that he will get a straight answer to eventually. But not with the coarseness of a demand. He has both patience and strength.

Ennoshita sighs and slips into silences sometimes as if realizing that this company is fleeting without needing the reminder, and the sentiment in the sound is beginning to echo in Keiji’s own blood. He tries to keep it in perspective. This resonance conflating between is them gentle-like; the twining of fresh water and saltwater at the mouth of an estuary, full of transition. He overrides that enticing image. Their encounter is more like a pebble dropped into a sea, its impact a sight of rippling grace, a stone left tumbling forever in the depths, never to be completely forgotten, but still only a small event in the grand scheme of things.

Not bombastic, yet he knows he’ll remember it later.

Keiji thinks they’re just walking aimless circles around the closed garden when Ennoshita abruptly turns into a hidden niche that’s more shade than sunlight. There’s a latticed panel crawling with ivy like the ones clinging to his Tokyo apartment. Backed up against it is a bulky lump covered in a white sheet.

This time the shape beneath the cloth doesn’t send a shock of dread through his system.

“I thought it wasn’t fair to be the only one to make a few requests. I don’t have much to offer, and it’s likely not as exciting as the things you can find at home, but…” Without further prevarication to offer, Ennoshita lets the cloth drop unceremoniously to the ground.

“You play?” Keiji lays a hand over the detailing crowning the white piano, fingertips brushing over the flowers etched into its surface. It fits well with the rest of the garden. Airy, elegant, and quite possibly an antique.

“Not very well.” Ennoshita scoots out the seat and sits down, wingtips dusting along the ground. He plays a few chords. It sounds tuned. “Honestly, I should be telling you to cover your ears. Any requests?”

He knows a few pieces, has a handful of favorites even, but he doesn’t know what Ennoshita is able to play and doesn’t want to discomfort him with an impossible request. After a thoughtful pause, Keiji says, “Something nice.”

“That’s rather vague.”

“Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

“Something nice, then,” Ennoshita laughs, head shaking, hands arching over the keys. Keiji can already tell by the way he gathers his posture that he’s not a complete novice. He’s proven right when Ennoshita’s fingers strike the first keys.

It’s a slow melody, an elegant swell rather than a dramatic surge meant to jar the listener with drama, but the mood created by the piece is undeniably stunning. Delicate. Keiji is caught between watching the way Ennoshita’s fingers move across the piano and watching the concentration on his face, present yet gentle and just shy of effortless; a sign that the song comes easily to him thanks to ample practice. The song ends several short minutes later – a final whisper of a note cast into the air.

“That was beautiful,” Keiji remarks into the waiting silence, quiet too because it almost feels like he's breaking something fragile in the aftermath of the music.

Ennoshita blinks, wordless, as if waiting for Keiji’s usual twist of humor to follow the bare compliment. When nothing else comes and Ennoshita begins to look, of all things, embarrassed, Keiji looks steadily into his eyes and says again, “It was beautiful.”

“So I’m going to take a wild guess here, Akaashi,” Konoha starts, amused, when Keiji comes back from a darkroom for the first time in years with the scent of developing fluid stuck in the back of his throat.

“I’d really prefer if you didn’t,” Keiji says, reclining next to them on the bed. That glint in their eyes hints at exactly what they’re getting at, and it most definitely involves feelings. “You may as well take the spare key and move in now.”

“You’re adorable when you’re being taken by someone like this. You better enjoy it while it lasts,” Konoha laughs. “Reminds you of the two of us, doesn’t it?”

“You used your fox magic on me when we first met and have been freeloading ever since.”

“I used my natural charm and won your favor,” Konoha corrects with a tsk. It’s too warm for it but they slide closer, press against Keiji’s side. “I never hear you complain about it, anyway. Not like you mean it.”

It’s too true to warrant even a token refutation, so Keiji lies back as Konoha grabs a fan to whisk them both with. It’s the tail end of dusk again, the room growing dimmer by the minute. Long shadows stretch over them both.

After enjoying a minute of repose, Keiji reaches up and pets Konoha beneath the chin with a single knuckle like he would a neighborhood cat. Konoha seizes up at once. The fan stops moving mid-twirl.

“Okay, asshole,” they say, rolling away with mutter of ‘not a house pet’. “Nice chat.”

Keiji lets his arm flop into the new space beside him, listening to Konoha trudge somewhere else.

That really never gets old.

He pretends that he’s forgotten to restate the ultimatum: Do you want help or not? Do you want to accept or decline the proposition I handed you on day one?

Oikawa summarily calls him out on it.

“I’m very glad that the situation didn’t turn out like we all worried it would, Keiji-kun, but you’re very much the heart of our little agency. The rest of us have day jobs to take care of and mutants wanting consultations have been piling up over the past few weeks. I never thought I would be telling you this, and I’m happy that you’ve been looking more rested lately, but maybe it’s time for you to relax a little less now, hm?”

“I heard you got lectured,” Konoha says later after letting themself in with the spare key that they’ve finally claimed as their own.

Keiji sighs, steadying his laptop as they bounce onto the couch to playfully tut about responsibility and discipline and look at you, shirking them both, never thought I'd see the day. It stops only when Oikawa traipses back in through the open bathroom doors and proudly announces that he’s baked an advanced dessert without scorching the oven and no, Konoha-san, not his hair either. He needs a taste tester.

Konoha puts up a show of resistance before volunteering, and they both disappear with a wave of increasing chatter. 

One by one, Keiji reads through all of the emails sitting at the top of his inbox, answering questions, arranging meetings, referring the ones he knows their agency can’t satisfactorily fulfill, compiling it all into a neat, looming lump of work. His calendar is packed for the next month and a half by the end of it.

He scrubs a hand over his face, head tilted against the back of the couch, thinking that this must be what the end of a very good vacation feels like.

(The sea is a glass mirror that summer, pitch black as the shuttered off sky. It’s nighttime and the clouds choke out the full moon, the air so dark that the beach blurs into the gurgling edges of the sea which blurs into the horizon, all a smear of black. If he walks out now it feels like he will sink into empty nothingness. He doesn’t dip his bare feet into the water. He’s too frightened. But there is something calling him forward, towards the pier, like there’s importance to be found there, so his legs begin carrying him forward even as they tremble at being near such churlish waters. Before taking the first step onto the pier he can hear the waves slap against the wooden stilts below. The constant battering of the tides. A board creaks beneath his next step - there’s nothing to hold onto when panic seizes him into stillness.

Keep going. Be careful, but keep going.

He keeps going. The pier is longer than he remembers it being, marching on and on into the middle of the sea until going back feels as daunting as moving forward. After a few minutes the planks begin to fall into disrepair, the water whips into a frenzy, and then the funayurei appear in the gaps between the waves, glowing and blinking out and glowing again closer than before, riding the frothing crests. He tries not to look at them. It’s hard when their warm red flames dance around in tempting mimicries of bonfires.

Eyes down, eyes forward.

The wood ages and splinters and creaks, sways gently with the sea, bends softly underfoot when the planks grow too weak to hold his weight. He scurries by least they break. The first gaping hole that he has to leap over makes his heart hammer in his chest. The rest of the way is a jigsaw puzzle of jagged gaps and flimsy boards.

He doesn’t know why he’s still walking. The call is still there, telling him to keep on moving, but he’s scared. It’s pitch black and he doesn’t want to step straight into the sea.

All it takes is one misstep.

The wood beneath his foot cracks and his leg plummets into the shadows below. When he struggles the board holding his other foot splits in half too, and now the cold, roiling waters have their teeth around half of him as he clings to the pier with both arms.

“Fuck,” he hisses, his terror ricocheting up so quickly that he feels submerged already, held down and unable to pull enough air into his lungs. His furtive calmness abandons him completely. He scrambles with new urgency – he’s strong enough to pull himself up like this, he’s done it a dozen times before. He should be strong enough, but his very body is leaden and waterclogged. Each shaky attempt to lift himself up collapses into failure, splashes him into the hungry sea again, the spirits jostling closer and closer on the waves. A palmful of biting splinters sinks into his skin and makes every movement increasingly painful until he’s left drained and clutching at the broken pier, short, vulgar exclamations falling from his lips.

“Fuck. No, no, come on- shit!”

A sudden strike of thunder rumbles through the air, turning the pier itself atremble. Keiji squeezes his eyes shut and waits for a burst of lightning to shred the wood to pieces and plunge him into his fate, distantly aware that it was supposed to be the other way around, lightening first and then thunder, but this whole place isn’t right, this whole place was just a siren’s call set up to have him get eaten up by the sea and he had been stupid enough to fall for it.

He’ll be struck down. He’ll be drowned. Spirited away by the funayurei spreading their fire over the sea.

When nothing comes within the next few breathless seconds, he looks up to see unfurled midnight wings.

“You poor thing,” Ennoshita says, rising from a crouch with silent grace, wind whipping his hair into a frenzy. “Can’t even help yourself. You have these spirits lusting after you, don’t you?”

“Ennoshita-san?" His voice doesn't sound like his own. Thin and tinny as if it's been squeezed through poor reception. "I… What are you doing here?”

“I heard you struggling and thought I would drop by. You’ve dug yourself into a bit of a hole.” His geta clack neatly over the boards. Somehow, they don’t snag or waver. Somehow, each and every one of Ennoshita’s footfalls lands sure. He smiles, head canted with a glimmering smile.

Something isn’t right. Ennoshita is smiling and laughing that gentle note of his but his voice gets lost to the winds and there’s a hard edge to his eyes that Keiji has never seen before, not even through the heavy suspicion of their first meeting.

“Here,” Ennoshita says, offering a hand. “It never gets old seeing you come out of my little koi pond like this. Do you really think that you can help me?”

“What?” Keiji’s outstretched arm pauses where his fingers were just grazing Ennoshita’s, shocked.

“Do you just want to feel good about yourself?”

“That’s the last thing that I-”

“I enjoy you so much,” Ennoshita cuts in, his voice powerful now. Talons bite into Keiji’s wrist and holds him painfully aloft. He doesn’t know which to trust more, this bruising grip or the crumbling pier. Which to fear more, the monster before him or the bubbling sea below. “But if you think that I only want your temporary pity, then you’re sorely mistaken, Akaashi.”

Keiji doesn’t have time to respond before he’s dropped straight into the gap. There is no resistance in the fall, just the endless fall itself, the water prizing his lips apart and stealing the breath from his lungs.)

He wakes completely beside himself.

It’s pitch black. He can’t make out where the darkness ends and his limbs begin and his heart is pounding so hard that it hurts and wants out. He’s afloat with terror, breathing high and fractured. When a shadow flickers somewhere out the corner of his eyes he jolts, frantic, waiting for twin wings to unfurl.

“Just me,” a voice says, detaching itself from the darkness. Konoha. He could never confuse that golden hair for anything else. “Easy. You yelled in your sleep. You okay?”

“Fine,” retorts Keiji on instinct, receiving a heavy exhale in response. He’s spiraling down quickly now. It helps when Konoha lights up Keiji's phone, chasing some of the darkness away with its soft glow.

“Or maybe not,” he hedges, the admission always harder to let roll off his tongue than they should be. They’re bitter weaknesses best swallowed up rather than given permission to overflow. This is just Konoha, he tells himself, feeling the bed dip as the other joins him, a bloom of warmth at his side.

“Same nightmare again? Come on and lie down with me. I’ve never seen you like that before.”

Keiji eases back at Konoha’s prompting, letting them move half on top of him. The weight is immediately grounding, and Keiji nudges them until they’re slotted more neatly together, chest to chest. He can feel their steady heartbeat and focuses on matching it for a long moment. When he feels less like he's coming apart at the seams, he sighs. “This one had a few tweaks to keep me on my toes.”

“Wanna tell me about it?” Konoha offers. Keiji closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Not feeling that one, huh?”

“It hasn’t been that bad in… It’s never been like that before. It was more detailed. And nighttime. Ennoshita-san was there, but he was...” Keiji trails off, not wanting to re-invite it all back in.

“I’m going to suggest something that you probably won’t like, but I’ve just now thought of it and it seems possible. Your Ennoshita is a karasu-tengu, yeah?”

Keiji hums a confirmation.

“You mentioned that he told you how he did something in the past to make him want to stay with this family for so long. My guess is that it was something bad, something that would make him a little scared of himself, maybe. Even I’ve been through that before. Humans can be so fragile.” Konoha laments. “You are too. There’s this thing called tengu-kakushi-”

“When a tengu abducts a human and then releases them, only for the human to return home with an altered mind. I know what that is. I doubt that he’s given me a state of dementia. He's not the sort, and I was never held captive by him.”

“Listen for a moment,” Konoha says, quiet and serious enough to make Keiji hold his tongue. “I don’t know how all of that works either, but I do know that some tengu can do it, just like some of them can appear in dreams at will. There are a lot of interpretations for what it means to be ‘held captive’, sweetheart, and it might not have to be literal. We both know that you’ve gotten fond of this one. Who's to say he's not holding you in his heart too?”

It doesn’t all fit as neatly as Keiji needs it to in order to believe it. In order to calm his leftover fear. It's too uncertain, too poetic.

Some of it strikes him as infuriatingly plausible anyway.

That dream hadn’t been normal, obviously influenced by something foreign, something strong, and the only departures from his usual recurring nightmare had been the time of day, the degree of fear, and Ennoshita’s presence.

It’s hard to reconcile the demon from his dream with the one he’s come to learn, but…

No point in hiding our monstrosity if that’s what we are, Konoha would say. We shouldn’t want to be anything but what we are.

“You can wait a little before doing this. Gods, you had me scared the other night. I need you to take care of yourself.”

“I am,” Keiji answers, sweeping aside a spider web as they break free from the tree line. The lake is placid and calm, prettily throwing back the noon sunlight in shimmery pieces. A broken mirror scattered on a blue carpet. “This will be the last time. I can’t draw it out anymore with the work that’s piled up now. I’ll ask him what he wants and close the case for good.”

“Please take a break after this, Akaashi,” Konoha insists, shoes getting wet in the shallows lapping at their ankles. "No matter what happens."

Keiji promises that he will, and then he wades into the lake with just the clothes on his back.

It’s worse than he remembers it.

The water seems tainted with something sinister, yanking him apart with harsh currents where before he could fool himself into thinking that he was being cradled near the very end. It's ruthless, cold, uncompromising even when Keiji goes pliant for it, as small as he could ever hope to make himself. The water still chants for more than he can give.

His throat is a mess of pins and needles on the other side, flaring with every dry heave that racks him even after all the water gets pushed out of his lungs. He feels flung apart, not wholly there as if some vital core of himself has been forgotten in-between.

Ennoshita isn’t there to help him out this time around and he's somewhat grateful for it, sure he looks more wrecked than ever before. Keiji doesn’t know how much time passes as he gathers himself in massive seconds and tiny grains of sand. It takes all of his strength just to lean over the edge of the koi pond and stay there, tremors rising and falling through him like tides instead of quickly fading away like usual.

He hears noisy footsteps approaching after a while and looks up, relieved that he doesn’t have to walk around this massive place.

It’s not Ennoshita.

They look outwardly human, wide-eyed, dressed in work clothes with a towel around their neck and green-stained fingers hooked through a pair of shears. Gardener, the ever-present part of his mind rationally explains. Ennoshita mentioned maintenance workers once before.

Keiji can’t even muster a single word before the man turns and bolts for the house.

There comes a commotion now, more people appearing from nowhere, somewhere beyond Keiji's narrowed awareness. They gather a distance away as if Keiji is a danger. Of course this all comes to a head now. The one day when he has absolutely no credentials on hand to explain why he's up slouched in the tiny pond of a private residence with no strength to pull himself out of it.

Nothing but gossip floats around for a moment, again too far and high for Keiji to make much sense of it. Then, parting through the middle of the crowd, a petite woman starts heading straight for him. Keiji thinks this could be the 'great grandchild' from the way she carries herself, shoulders back and sure, comfort in her gait. This is her home and doubtlessly her domain.

She comes close enough for him to make out the print of her shirt when yet another flurry of motion strikes the ground, hard and impactful this time, a collective gasp rippling through the crowd. Some fearful, some awed.

Wings.

They’re the first thing that Keiji notices as Ennoshita rises with grace, back turned to him. He's never seen the other fly before - had been entertaining the thought that he could be permanently injured, maimed, or flightless for whatever reason. Apparently not.

Ennoshita glances over a shoulder at Keiji with a deep frown that Keiji hardly has the energy to read. It’s there and gone in an instant anyway, Ennoshita walking up to the woman. He sees her smile at him. They trail a distance away together, much too far to eavesdrop, steeped in conversation.

They stay away for a good while, talking. Keiji presses his forehead into the bend of his elbow, feeling the rhythmic brush of two koi against him this time instead of just the speckled one. The elusive second fish extending its friendship at last.

This time when he hears approaching footsteps they’re much lighter and almost familiar.

“That was some timing,” Ennoshita remarks from above, crouching down. He sounds at ease. Keiji feels a part of himself shudder loose and relax for it, and it’s only then when he realizes how tense his body was. He’s sore all over. “You could have come out much earlier, you know. No one here was ever going to…”

The rest suddenly falls away.

“Your hands," Ennoshita says, "You're a-”

“My mom was.” Keiji coughs and Ennoshita rushes over to pull him from the shallows. The grass is slippery and too soft but they both sink to their knees there, crouched in the cold thin water sluicing off Keiji’s body.

Ennoshita rubs at his back when a vengeful bout of splutters grips him, soothingly, and then his palm travels down to stroke the top of Keiji’s hand.

"Look at that," Ennoshita marvels, rubbing at the golden scales patching over Keiji's skin. Keiji doesn't look. The ministrations are odd and distantly comforting, like it's been done to him before, or like he's been unknowingly denying himself a sensation as satisfying as itching a scratch. Ennoshita's hands have gotten wet without losing their warmth, easing the petting slick instead of tacky, and with each circuit of his fingertips more heat sinks into the backs of Keiji's hands.

By the time Keiji gathers his breath his throat is in shambles. “I've never been able to do more than this. I’m only half ningyo.”

“It's so obvious now that I've seen it. Your voice has that tone to it too. But why haven't I seen it before? You can keep it hidden?”

"It... flares up each time I move through the water, but it's not usually so… lasting."

"Your mother didn't teach you more?"

“She passed away when I was little. We were going to wait until... until that summer, when the weather got warmer. But something happened and it wasn't... natural. We only heard rumors afterwards.”

Ennoshita studies his face despite all the effort Keiji makes to shutter his expression closed, to speak as if he's telling an inconsequential story and not a personal tragedy, but too much has happened to protect his shelled composure. Cracks flake off, flutter to the ground, exposing the tender hurt thing squirming inside. It feels like he's baring it all even while his face feels stiff and frozen still, not yet fully recovered from the trip over. Keiji weathers the swell of grief like he does the currents, mouth closed, thin lipped, yielding himself to them without letting the water rush in to choke out his very life. He's swallowing down the pinching tightness in his throat when he hears Ennoshita's sympathetic, “I'm sorry. Was it a human who did it?” 

Keiji curls his fingers, Ennoshita's hands drawing away at the motion. “You didn't know.” 

“You poor thing,” Ennoshita says, sounding nothing like the one from Keiji’s dream. This one is soft with empathy. “Shining in the water like that. You could have been beautiful. The ningyo have always had it hard, being feared and their flesh coveted. I've… always thought being killed or eaten a terrible fate, no matter what the others say about balance.”

A burning silence takes him. There are moments when he feels the disconnect between their ages keenly, when Konoha or Ennoshita or any other old, old monster spoke more with veiled wisdom than with plain language. He's unmoved by whatever missed beauty Ennoshita was imagining, that echo of pity torn straight from his nightmare.

It wasn't about beauty, or high-minded balance, or justice or fairness or kind platitudes. It was about loss, low and gritty as his silt-caked knees. Keiji often thinks that grief should be allowed its burden without others trying to take pieces of it from you, dressing it up as something else, something nice and conquerable. He breathes around the constriction viced around his chest and stands up, teetering with the weight of his waterclogged clothes and the dredges of pure exhaustion.

Ennoshita helps him up and, when he doesn’t topple over, lets him go.

There's webbing between his fingers, just one pearl sized scale left near the heel of his left palm when he examines it, glassy in the sunlight. Keiji watches it fade away like a lost speck of gold sinking back down into a riverbed. Human again - at least in appearance. 

When he turns around Ennoshita has moved a little away, gazing at something off to the side. Keiji gets the feeling that the nonchalance is mostly for his sake and gratefully accepts it, trudging over to stand before him.

For the first time, he notices that the crowd has dispersed. Maybe they’d left a long time ago.

“I had a dream about you the other night,” Keiji says, rubbing a hand over his own throat. He sounds horrible; like two pieces of sandpaper rubbed together. Like he's making a desperate grab for normalcy.

“Really?” Ennoshita smiles, tentatively, as if he’s pleased but unsure if he's allowed to be.

“It was more like a nightmare,” Keiji amends. That only makes Ennoshita’s smile grow wider as if nightmares were his personal preference. Maybe they were, truly. “You weren’t talking like yourself.”

“What did I say?”

“That I couldn’t help you.”

At that Ennoshita’s dips his eyes to the ground, smile melting away with the gesture. Keiji watches the way he grazes a finger over the small feathers tufting down his neck. He thinks it must be a nervous habit, same as the way Keiji twines his fingers together when the lull stretches on for a little too long, but there’s something lurking underneath that too. A great deal of hesitation. A twinge of something tight laced through his voice.

“And that counts as a nightmare for you now?”

“There were other things happening too. A lot of open water for one, and then you threw me into it and I drowned.”

Ennoshita heaves a sigh, guilt washing over his face and his head hung low. “I never thought that it would… Since you’re half monster, I thought it wouldn’t be able to… work, not properly, since we only affect humans in that way. And I never wanted it to be bad. I’m not refined with my abilities like some other tengu are, I don’t know why, but I have never been good enough to control the way I walk into dreams as much as I should and I only… Had you on my mind, is all. When you were away.”

“Held captive,” Keiji murmurs, Ennoshita flinching, no doubt braced for some visceral reaction. It’s an undeniable affirmation of Konoha’s theory dropped right there before him and where he thought he would feel disturbed, invaded, a thread of outrage, or an echo of his nightmare’s terror, there was only an overwhelming sense of closure.

Keiji feels the self-control that he’s honed his whole life slot into place as smoothly as he’s always wanted it to, aware of how his reaction now could alter whatever flowed between them forever. Could dam it up completely and morph their encounter into that inconsequential drop of a pebble into the sea.

He doesn’t raise his voice or walk away. He takes a deep breath, shores up patience and all the want buzzing in his blood and says, lightly, “Your dream self must not like me very much.”

Ennoshita finally raises his eyes. A lingering hint of something remains in his gaze, something murky and impenetrable, but it turns soft around the edges the longer they look at each other, just like every sea that Keiji has ever waded into – a gentle decline into the unknown rife with all the currents that have always tried to grab him and bring him under. Consuming, thrilling, and full of brilliance. “I have no idea why.”

“Me neither,” Keiji says, watching the hope glint in Ennoshita’s smile, knowing it was a perfect mirror of his own. “I like the one in front of me.”

“I have one more request to ask of you,” Ennoshita says hours later, when Keiji’s been given ample time, water, and food to fully recover. A box of onigiri left destroyed with two-handed vigor. The sunset is just beginning to throw shades of red and orange into the sky before fading into a fledgling darkness. The colors make a breathtaking display as they break over the distant mountains and spill warmly into the garden itself.

Keiji wishes he’d had the foresight to bring his camera back.

It’s the first time that Keiji has seen Ennoshita in the midst of a coming oumagatoki hour. It suits him just like daylight had, just like the nighttime before that, and like every other hour in between, he's sure.

“If it’s within reason,” Keiji answers.

Ennoshita stands up, gesturing for Keiji to do the same. Keiji is caught by sudden trepidation at the look on Ennoshita’s face, one that he can’t quite read even while he stares straight at it.

This is the farewell that he never wanted to see come. The long-delayed answer to the proposition Keiji had asked weeks ago: If you say no I’ll go back the way that I came. Just like that? Just like that.

“Just one more request,” Ennoshita repeats, circling behind him. Keiji doesn’t turn because he greatly needs the lack of eye contact right now, especially when he feels warm hands glide down his back, causing him to jolt in surprise. The touch is much braver than he’s come to expected from Ennoshita's habitual flashes of shyness, slow but not riddled with hesitation. Firm hands curls around his ribcage, bracing him, the simple gesture breathtakingly intimate. Heat sinks into him that way. Keiji is certain that Ennoshita must be able to feel the rapid heartbeat that he has cupped in his palm. 

“Whatever you want,” Keiji promises, eyes slipping shut, the words like brittle ash in his mouth. He cants back into Ennoshita’s embrace anyway, selfishly, noticing their height difference more than ever before. Maybe for the first time, what with the illusion of extra height that Ennoshita’s wings grants him.

“Please don’t fall,” Ennoshita says.

It’s all the warning that Keiji gets before Ennoshita's arms wrap around his abdomen completely, hard enough to ache, and then he’s being lifted up, not just bodily up, but skyward. The acceleration is dizzying, the rush buffeting his ears completely different from the silken pressure of water that he’s grown accustomed to. He’s only aware that he may have screamed, loudly, somewhere between being launched into the air when Ennoshita’s ringing laughter cuts through the whirling adrenaline, the sound dropped straight into the shell of his ear.

“Tell me what you need!” Comes the exclamation.

Keiji isn’t sure if he has ever felt a jumble of emotions so potently before.

“A stream, a river, pond, lake, or sea – anything big and deep enough that we can both fit into!” His mouth feels too dry when he opens it to shout. He has to shut it and swallow, breathless. “Ennoshita, if I take you that way it won’t feel good!”

The wind becomes less noisy as Ennoshita slows to a more acceptable speed. “I had the feeling it wouldn’t be pleasant. I’ve seen your face right after you leave my pond several times now and you always looked shaken. But I trust you.”

“About as far as you can throw me, is it?” Keiji says, trying to scan the ground below for signs of water and only catching the worst bout of dizziness for it. He groans and shuts his eyes, hearing amusement roll rife off of Ennoshita’s tongue.

“Yes,” Ennoshita says. “About that far.”

There is, gratefully, a wide river not very far away. Ennoshita descends much more gently than he went airborne, holding Keiji steady for long moments after both their feet have touched their ground.

“Never doing that again,” mumbles Keiji, taking a hold of Ennoshita’s hand to guide them both into the water. He thinks he might be suffering from vertigo but can't wait, can't pause to pace himself properly. There is hardly a gentle decline. The slope starts deceptively shallow before steeply bottoming out, leaving Keiji to tread easily with his free limbs and Ennoshita to splash wildly at the water.

“You can’t swim,” Keiji says, reading the truth of it in the small, frantic way that Ennoshita tries to fight the water instead of work with it.

Ennoshita’s grip is hard enough to hurt when he retorts, gaspingly, “You know… birds aren’t made to be… to be underwater.”

Startingly, the ever-present fear that usually grips Keiji in these moments recedes into the background instead of rearing up to steal his composure. It thrums tightly beneath his sternum without lurching into that hungry, grasping thing which always plagues him. He moves closer to Ennoshita, lets him clutch an arm around him desperately enough that Keiji struggles for balance for a second, needing to accommodate himself to the burden of keeping another person’s weight afloat beside him.

And then he fixes a secure grip around Ennoshita too, voice raised high enough to break through the fear that he can see etched onto Ennoshita's face.

“Just hold your breath,” Keiji says. “Don't let go. I’ll do the rest.”

Ennoshita nods rather helplessly. Keiji doesn’t give the trepidation time to take root.

He dives underwater, dragging Ennoshita into the river’s murky depths with strong kicks of his legs. He doesn’t wait for that rattling pressure to gnaw into his chest this time either. Once they’re deep enough, once the dabbling surface is just a distant glitter above, Keiji opens his mouth, takes one big, agonizing inhale, and lets the currents do the rest.

“Never… ever doing that again. That was… absolutely terrible,” Ennoshita hacks when they fall into a heap on the other side. Keiji guides them both towards the shore until the lake bed rises up to greet them and the water’s buoyancy ebbs away, leaving them both heavy and wrung out and panting on a gritty patch of beach.

Keiji has never traveled this much in such a short lapse of time in his life. He feels haggard, shaken, utterly done, and secretly proud all at once.

Ennoshita’s wings look smaller and stringy when drenched, their black feathers stuck in clumps and odd angles. His bangs are a flattened mess against his forehead, his cheeks tinted a harassed shade of red from the journey. Slumped breathless onto his back, bits of sand stuck everywhere, he looks the furthest thing from grace, from intimidation, from the stuff of nightmares.

I want to know who told you that you were dangerous. Who told you the ugly definition of monstrous. I want to know who told you that you were beautiful and untouchable, but only like a spectator would murmur praise to a hung painting before moving on to the next.

“Akaashi?” Dusk has fallen; the night new and barely begun. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Keiji says, breathing in the prickling air. There’s a rustle nearby. Konoha’s voice calling out and rapidly growing nearer. “I’m fine now.”

In that increasingly familiar echo of each other, Ennoshita smiles and says, “So am I.”