Archive of Our Own

-Beginning-

Tenma’s new editor is fresh out of university, but Tenma is convinced that he’s an old man undercover. Convinced that in addition to his humanities degree, Akaashi had earned an extra in costume makeup. That each morning he leans towards his bathroom mirror and applies concealer to his forehead and underneath his eyes, erasing wrinkles and eye bags and laugh lines— not that the latter would have been at all prominent in the first place. That he dyes his gray hair with salon quality black, or tugs on the world’s most convincing wig. That he employs all of those movie monster prosthetics that warp him, in time-traveler fashion, backwards fifty years. 

It’s everything else that blows Akaashi’s cover. It’s the small rotating wardrobe of neutrals, his obsolete vocabulary. It’s the mumbling to himself under his breath as he reads through Tenma’s drafts, adjusting his think-framed glasses on the bridge of his nose. It’s the orthopedic sneakers he wears into the office, and the frumpy loafers he swaps them out for until he leaves for the elevator come end of day. Really, it would be a foolproof disguise if Tenma weren’t so damn smart, and if he hadn’t recently seen that spy documentary that had taught him all about this sort of thing.  

After coming to this conclusion, one of the manga proposals he’d had slid across Akaashi’s desk had been about an elderly man who, with the help of his idol-wannabe granddaughter, disguises himself as a high schooler in order to relive his glory days. 

"This has the potential to be rich in comedy, Udai-san," Akaashi had said, eyebrows knitted together as he’d pushed the stack of papers back towards Tenma. "I found the Ojii-san’s inability to understand youth slang a sufficient, relatable gag. However, I believe Shonen Vie expects you to produce something more action-based." 

None of that had surprised Tenma, least of all that Akaashi thought the grandfather character relatable. He’d taken back the papers and nodded. 

"Alright, Akaashi-san," he’d said, "something more action based.”

Like Akaashi, Izumi has some old qualities about her, like the fact that she never texts, only calls until Tenma answers. Only four years his senior, Tenma has said that the technological gap between them shouldn’t be all that vast. But he’d texted her that, so she hadn’t responded. 

"Mom wants to know if you’d come home for Dad’s birthday," Izumi says over the phone, and Tenma grimaces, kicking his non-orthopedic sneakers up onto the empty half of his work station. 

“Since when does he even celebrate that,” Tenma says, rolling his eyes in an exaggerated motion at one of the other assistants passing behind him.

“It’s a milestone year,” Izumi says. “It sounds like it’s important to him.” 

“Not important enough for him to ask me himself, apparently.” 

“Can you really blame him?” Izumi sighs, and Tenma grimaces again at that tone— what is he, ten years old again? Izumi opening open her bedroom door to find the three of them wielding scissors and magic markers, sitting amongst her stationary, her stamp kit, her Moshi tape? Izumi in her uniform, her dark braids, bringing a hand to her forehead like a weary old woman, no energy for anger. Just get out, she would say, dull, no bite. It would only be later, when the stationary was moved to a higher shelf, that she would remember the appropriate emotion. Mid math equation, mid meal, mid piano practice, she would pause what she was doing to hit him, hard, with textbook, with dish towel, with clarinet case. That was for before, she would say. Stop going through my stuff or I’ll tell the Nakata sisters that their little brother is nothing better than a dirty little thief. 

Like those girls even know you exist. 

Another smack with the nearest blunt object. 

“Well, whatever. I’m real busy at work that day,” Tenma says in the present, leaning back in his uncomfortable office chair, free hand toying with his lanyard. 

“I didn’t give you a date, Tenma.” 

“You did give me a date. I know Dad’s birthday, I’m not that bad.” He yawns, taking his sneakers off the desk before anybody important enough to care catches him, or before he accidentally kicks off the stack of pages he’s supposed to be touching up. “Look, I’m swamped, you know these mangaka deadlines. I’ve gotta—”

"What if I said that you could all just come to my place instead?" Izumi interrupts. “And that you wouldn’t have to go back to Arata.” 

So there it is. She would have made a good lawyer, not a half-bad spy or undercover cop. You make your Plan A sound like your Plan B, you make it sounds like there are two viable plans in the first place. 

Before he can answer, there’s a squabbling on Izumi’s side of the call, and Tenma pulls the phone away from his ear a tad as she yells, her sharp scream overlaying a crash and the thump of her dropped cellphone.

"You alright?" He asks, his voice sounding too frantic, a stupid kid’s voice. He recalls his rationality like the roving dog that it is as Izumi returns to the phone.

"Sorry about that," she says, sounding more annoyed than anything. Maybe the bluetooth on her hearing aids had disconnected. Maybe she’d just pretended not to hear. Either way, Tenma exhales. 

"I’m gunna guess," he says. “Those neighbors of yours. Did the international spy syndicate finally catch up to them? Or was that a former tenant, wronged by the landlord, seeking justice in the only way he knows how?"

“You’ve always had a wonderful imagination, Ten-kun," Izumi says plainly. “My cat knocked a bowl off the counter. Please. You’d only have to come to Sendai, no further. Consider it." 

“You are looking tense, Udai-san," Akaashi says, eyes never once moving away from where he’s sifting through pages of Tenma’s latest one-shot proposal.

"I’m just wondering what you think of it," Tenma says, leaning an elbow into Akaashi’s desk to get a better view of the stack of storyboards and character sketches for what will become Warrior Dragon: Midair Collision. 

"This concept possesses a great amount of depth," Akaashi says, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "I am confused, however, as to what exactly they are fighting. Surely there is more to it than just—" Akaashi flips a page over "—evil shapeshifting necromancers". 

Judging by the way Akaashi says evil shapeshifting necromancers like he’s saying automatic tax rebates, he is failing to see how simply epic the evil shapeshifting necromancers are. Failing to see the ultimate climax of the story in which the necromancers will revive the title dragon’s former rider as a distorted zombie-like version of himself, aback the reanimated corpse of a notorious downed dragon. Failing to envision a final showdown, the titular midair collision so epic that Tenma’s manga shatters sales records. Makes Tenma so famous that he’ll have to start cracking down on his anonymity. Maybe pick an animal character to represent his likeness. 

Tenma explains this to Akaashi, who just stares at him like Tenma is explaining some sort of hip new thing the kids are into these days, or one of those newfangled technological gadgets.  

"That does have emotional potential," Akaashi says slowly, mulling over his words. "Udai-san, you seem to have a particular interest in the reanimation of the dead. I noticed that in works from earlier in your career. Perhaps it may benefit you to explore that further.”  

Huh. Tenma hadn’t been aware that Akaashi had read any of that, or had thought to look that deep. Part of the reason he’d agreed to work with this kid was because unlike literally every other person in Tenma’s life here, Akaashi apparently wasn’t into Manga. And while Tenma’s still not sure how one can’t be into manga, he’d initially thought it something like a good riddle: this manga editor who didn’t like manga. That, and if he was going to get stuck with a recent grad, it might as well be one with a unique perspective, not just some starry-eyed fanboy like the ones back in high school. Those over-anxious first years driven to distraction on the bench, missing easy bumps as they whispered to one another during drills, that’s him, over there, Karasuno’s Little Giant.

“You really don’t have to read any of that,” Tenma says, waving a hand. “You’re going to think less of me and my talents, Akaashi-san, really! Hopefully you didn’t get to that Headless Horseman one, I promise I’ve since learned how to draw horses.”

Akaashi just looks at him blankly. So apparently Headless Horsemen are only popular with the kids. 

“It is my job to be familiar with your work,” Akaashi says at last. “But no, I did not see any… Headless Horseman. That must not have been a Shonen Vie publication. However, your Rookie Awards submission in particular has an exceptionally unique take on the afterlife.” 

How is that even around anymore? Shouldn’t that be dead and buried? Burned, shredded, archived? It should really be illegal for anybody to read that. There should be the swift implementation of some sort of censorship laws. Each time he’s tried to reread that, there’s been a wash of something — embarrassment, definitely embarrassment— those dated drawings, that wonky dialogue, it may as well be a different Mangaka entirely. He barely remembers writing it. He does remember starting it shortly after New Years, but how, how, had he ever had the time, the energy, the space, the nerve, to finish it? To even submit it? It’s not like he ever thought it would win, or that actual people would read it. 

The award plaque currently sits on a wobbly self-assembled bookcase in his apartment, hidden from view by what remains of a gift basket from Izumi. The type she occasionally sends if they contain, may contain, or were processed in a facility that processes, peanuts or tree nuts. 

"Well, I’ve always thought ghosts and zombies and that sort of stuff were cool,” Tenma says. “Guess I still have the taste of a fourteen year old. Akaashi-san, thanks for your feedback. Normally I wouldn’t do this to you, but I’ve got a train to catch." Tenma gestures to the backpack beside his desk, the physical proof of the effectiveness of Izumi’s needling. It’s just Sendai, after all, no further. 

Akaashi nods in what seems like solidarity. 

"May I inquire as to where you are going?"

No. He may not.

"Gotta see my parents," Tenma says anyway. “I’m a very dutiful son." 

"Ah. I do not believe I know where you grew up, Udai-san," Akaashi says, and like so many times since everything, Tenma makes the choice— to tell or not to tell. 

Before, it was easy. His first year of University, amongst new friends, classmates, it was a question that popped up often. Tenma would just laugh and bring a hand to the back of his neck, feeling his hair, longer than it had ever been, and say I’m from an hour or so north of Sendai. His new Tokyo friends would nod because they didn’t know the geography of that area well enough to ask any more questions. If they did ask, he’d give them the name, and very rarely would anyone have heard of it. So the conversation would shift, and nobody, Tenma included, would think anything of it. 

Now, every time he’s asked, he attempts to answer like he used to— all casual. Before that name had become a synonym. He says it fast, slippery, ripping off a bandaid. Say it now or it will be awkward later. Not the sort of thing easy to bring up casually. Something that, when discovered, it’s obvious you’ve been keeping somewhat secret. I grew up in Arata Town, an hour north of Sendai. And they pause, turning the name that once, nobody knew but now, everybody knows, over and over in their brains, until they remember where they’ve heard it before and go oh. For Tenma is no longer from a small town that nobody has ever heard of. Now, he is from an event.

Right now, though, Tenma has a train to catch, and an editor he’d rather not have knowing. Old people read the news religiously, after all. He would definitely recognize it. 

"Oh, I’m from the Tohoku region, so it’s a bit of a hike," he says, grabbing the handle of his suitcase and feeling for his keys and wallet in his jacket pocket. "We venture north! Have a good weekend, Akaashi-san. Get some rest." 

Fifteen minutes into his visit, Tenma decides on his next proposal for Akaashi. Help!: My Girlfriend Owns a Cat from Hell will sell well, especially with cat lovers, who will see their own lovable pet in Akuma-chan’s antics. They’ll laugh as Akuma-chan terrorizes his owner’s girlfriend whenever the owner’s back is turned, and laugh even harder when the owner cannot possibly comprehend how anybody could hate the little sweetheart. Tenma will include photos of the demon himself in interviews, an overweight tabby with deep amber eyes that follow Tenma around the apartment and beam out subliminal questions that only the intended recipient can hear. 

What are you doing here, Udai Tenma? The cat’s eyes ask as he unlaces his sneakers. Why haven’t you visited since I was a kitten? The cat follows Tenma to the refrigerator. Now can you see the terrible cat I’ve grown to be? The cat hops up on the countertop and Tenma extends a diplomatic hand. The cat slices with trained swiftness. Get back on the Shinkansen, the cat hisses as Tenma clamps a palm to his bloodied wrist, go back to Tokyo. Tenma swears loudly and the cat hops to the top of the refrigerator, peering down at him with those unnerving eyes. You don't belong here. You never will. 

“Look at that. We match, Udai-kun,” Izumi’s partner, Eri, says as Tenma sits on the toilet seat lid and wipes down bloodied claw mark with antiseptic wipes. He winces; Eri hands him a bandaid from a first aid kit conjured from underneath the sink, and holds out her other hand to reveal the nearly identical scratch up her forearm.

“Someone could’ve warned me,” Tenma says bitterly. “I could’ve been killed."

"He can be sweet," Eri says, "he’s just bad with strangers."

Being bad with strangers doesn’t explain Eri’s scratch, only Tenma’s, but he doesn’t say that. Just peels the backing off the bandaid and concentrates very hard on situating it just right over the wound. An infection might result in amputation, and amputation would ruin his career, although No Hands Mangaka would make for a good manga, and maybe an even better one if the IRL Mangaka really had no hands. The faucet drips in the background, slow plinks against the ceramic as Tenma holds out his palm, silently, for another bandaid, and Eri, silently, procures it. 

“Thank you for coming, though, really,” Eri says once the plink plink plink of the faucet is enough to make anyone feel like they’re being waterboarded. "It means a lot to Izumi. She knows how hard this is for you."

This is not hard. The only thing that’s hard about this is that Izumi’s cat is going to devour him in his sleep. That tomorrow he might wake as an animated skeleton, and Akaashi will look at him come Monday and go, Udai-san, are you sleeping alright? But Tenma won’t be able to answer because the damn cat stole his vocal cords.

"It’s nothing, really," Tenma says, pressing the second bandaid down across the gash, feeling the prickle of adhesive and cotton against his arm hair. "The Shinkansen’s real speedy, and they got cushy seats. Nothing hard about it. Quite soft, actually.” 

Eri laughs, but there’s little humor in it: wry and bewildered.

“So that’s how it’s going to be?” She asks as Tenma stands up from the toilet and drops the bandaid wrappings into the wastebasket. 

“How what’s going to be? I had a great ride, Yoshida-san. Train is the best way to get around, it really beats out any other form of transportation, including airplane. Have you ever been on an airplane?” 

“We went to Canada over the summer.” 

“I thought Izumi made you kayak.” 

“I never bothered to learn,” Eri hums, slamming the plastic box shut and moving to return it to underneath the sink. “How long are you staying again?” 

“Well that’s rude. I’m Izumi’s family and it means a lot to her that I’m here.” 

Eri squints not unlike her evil cat, and Tenma looks right past her to the bathroom mirror, the reflection of the back of her head, her short boyish haircut, the reflection of his own face, his hair shoulder length now, scraggly and dark. Compared to Reflection Eri, Reflection Tenma looks tall. Maybe like the volleyball player he’d once thought he’d be. But who had he ever really been kidding. He hadn’t even kid himself at the end— it was something exhilarating, brutal, something he’d been lucky to be a part of. But it was also, like every other good thing, fleeting. And, like people have always said, Tenma’s strong suit has never been athleticism, or height, or taking the train any father north than Sendai, but has always been his imagination.

In the izakaya, Tenma balls up bits of paper from his straw wrapper and flicks them across the table at Eri whenever he wants his beer refilled, and Eri, hogging the pitcher, obliges each time. The conversations fall numbingly predictable. Izumi talks about her job, which might be interesting if not for Izumi’s talent for make anything from the discovery of aliens living among us to the reanimation of the wooly mammoth sound boring. Tenma’s mother chastises the length of Tenma’s hair and the color of Izumi’s, but with very little conviction. His father asks about specific big players at Shonen Vie who Tenma has never even seen much less spoken to, and he answers that the creator behind Rocket Road Rangers listens to exclusively teen idol music, but don’t tell anyone I told you that. Eri listens along, refills the drinks, answers questions from the Udais, Yoshida-chan, how did you enjoy Canada?”

Oh, I loved it! I didn’t know it would be so beautiful. 

Did Izumi tour you around her old school? 

No, Mom, we were on the opposite side of the country. 

Well, that country is just one big blur to me, I don’t know where anything is out there. You should’ve taken Yoshida-chan to your school, Izumi, I bet she would have liked to see it. 

Oh, no, that’s alright, really, I think we were on the better coast anyway. Let me show you the pictures we took of the Orcas. 

Whale watching! I didn’t realize you went out on the ocean. 

Tenma’s ears tune out the conversation. His eyes drift from his meal. He takes another sip of his beer and begins to think through how the anime adaptation of Help!: My Girlfriend Owns a Cat from Hell will be received by audiences who had adored the manga for its four panel charm. But the ruckus at a nearby table diverts his attention: three teenagers howling with laughter over something on a cellphone and getting dirty looks from their neighbors. One of them turns the screen towards his friends who snort, who lean in, who talk with their mouths full. One thumps a fist beside the cutlery, another takes a big sip from his soda. They pool their cash in a pitiful attempt to pay, they double check their coat pockets, they count coins in their palms. They look to be about fifteen.

"Tenma, did you hear me?" His mother’s voice asks. Tenma jumps. He smashes his knee into the underside of the table so hard that one of the water glasses topples, spills across Izumi’s spicy pork. 

Inside the izakaya, Tenma’s father agues with his daughter over who is footing the bill. Outside, Tenma waits with his mother for the taxi he is footing the bill for. He zips his thin jacket and squares his shoulders against the nippy Sendai winter as his mother fixes a hat over her ears and tugs on a matching pair of knit mittens, both spun from a gaudy prismatic yarn. 

“You’re staying with your sister tonight?” She asks him tentatively, and Tenma nods. He really should have brought a winter jacket, but it’s been damn near tropical in Tokyo this winter. 

“She’s putting me up on her sofa bed,” Tenma says. “The lap of luxury. It’s not because I’m too cheap for a hotel.”

“No, no. Of course not,” she says. Even now he’s never sure if she’s joking. It’s not like Tenma makes all that much money, but in her view, he’s a Mangaka in Tokyo, and Mangakas in Tokyo who don’t call their mothers about money, and sometimes even send their mothers money, must be making a lot of it. She holds out her hands, turning her ugly mittens over, palm up. “Do you like my new gloves?”

“Mittens.”

“Excuse me?”

“Those are mittens, not gloves. Gloves have individual fingers.” 

“Details, details,” she bats his words away with one of the paw-like mittens. “Nakata-san made them, actually. She’s become quite the artist too, you see, and I just had to have a pair for myself.” 

Tenma looks away from the ugly gloves and the ugly hat, out at the city slumping slowly into dusk. Lumpy mittens the color of unicorn puke sure don’t count as art. 

“She’s doing well, keeping herself busy,” his mother continues. “And her boy—”

"Oka-san, did I tell you about my new editor?" Tenma interrupts, ignoring the disdainful look on his mother’s face as she shoves her mittens into her coat pockets. "He’s just out of university but he acts like an old man. And so harsh, told me I can’t draw dragons better than a middle schooler.”

“Tenma," she sighs. Just like her daughter— which Izumi would hate if he mentioned it. Might even revert back to fourteen-year-old-hood and hit him with the television remote once they get back to the apartment. 

On his rock hard sofa bed, Tenma is definitely being watched: by the spy network neighbors, by the corner cobweb spiders, by the cat that’s surely hiding underneath the sofa and ready to pull him down into some blackhole never to be seen again. So he steps to the floor slowly, lest he wake the cat, layers his too-thin coat over his pajama t-shirt, wraps one of Izumi’s sofa blankets around him, and slips outside to sit on the balcony. 

The wind so many floors up eats at every bit of exposed skin, but death-by-animal seems worse than death-by-elements, so Tenma pulls his knees to his chest in one of Izumi’s two plastic chairs and looks out at Sendai. For living so close for so much of his life, he really hasn’t spent much time here. His parents weren’t go to Sendai for the day people. Izumi had been, but she’d never taken Tenma with her. Maybe she thought he would tattle. He probably would have. So Sendai, it was really just for volleyball. Each year standing inside the grand municipal gym, posing with a different combination of boys underneath an unnerving installation meant to look like the sun. That was what Sendai was— taught in civics class. It was the sun that their region orbited, that gave life to all the scattered Tohoku towns, even those as far as Arata. 

“What are you even doing out here?"

Tenma jolts, the chair scraping underneath him, and he curses, again, that stabbing panic. He turns his head as Izumi steps out onto the balcony, appropriately bundled up for the cold. She sets a steaming mug on the tempered glass table beside him. 

"Coffee?" He asks, making sure to raise his voice and angle himself towards her. 

"It’s one in the morning, Tenma."

"Decaf?"

She rolls her eyes, holding her own mug gingerly by the handle as she walks in front of him. She pauses. 

"Can we switch seats?" She asks, gesturing towards her ear with her free hand.

"I mean, we could just go inside and not, like, die of frostbite," Tenma says, but he moves regardless, lets Izumi lower herself into his vacated seat.

"Nah," she says, and Tenma watches as she folds her knees to her chest, positions herself in the chair so she’s sort-of facing him. "It’s nice out here at night." It’s an incredibly Izumi thing to say. As children, while Tenma would layer additional blankets atop his bedspread, she’d rise early to shovel the driveway, humming to herself as she beat icicles off the awning with the back end of a broom. While Tenma was only ever able to be coaxed from the warmth of the kotatsu by his two best friends promising snowball fights or sledding, Izumi would offer to walk the neighbor’s dog, offer to smack residual snow from their car or their trees. She’d bust out her ice skates and practice on the small pond near the athletic center; she’d return with snowflakes speckling her then dark hair. Their parents sometimes called her a winter creature. An arctic fox or snowy owl whose best colors emerged in the cold and the dark. 

"This is hardly nice," he mumbles. 

"Well, you’re the one out here," Izumi says, which is reasonable, so Tenma just shrugs and takes a sip of the tea, hot and minty, a tinge of honey. He’s not sure what to say to Izumi, what the topic of conversation is supposed to be. So he concentrates on the quiet, or the not-so-quiet: the beep of a truck unloading, the low whirr of an airplane overhead, and, if he listens close enough, maybe the lap of the ocean against the shore. 

But that’s ridiculous. Izumi’s apartment is far from the coast. He can’t hear the ocean just as Izumi probably can’t hear the truck, the airplane, the faint rattle of the wind through the bare trees. 

“So how’s work?” Izumi says, sparing Tenma from the task of making conversation. "What’s your next big thing?"

"I don’t know. Nothing seems to be sticking." He takes another sip of tea, feeling the steam in his throat and his belly, warming the cold dark crevices of his insides, easing the lesions left by gnawing dread. "My editor says I should do another monster comic. Ghosts or zombies or something” 

"Is this the same editor who just graduated university?"

Tenma nods, and Izumi, for maybe the first time this visit, smiles, her expression illuminated by the kitchen light splintered through the sliding glass door. 

“That sounds like bad advice," she says, a little too loud, abrupt in the night. "I never got the impression that you actually liked that sort of stuff.” 

“Of course I like that sort of stuff. I wouldn’t write about it if I didn’t.” 

"Okay. Well… it’s good that you know that, then." Izumi says. The pair of them listen to the slamming of a car door stories below— or at least Tenma does. 

“Eri was saying she read that ghost one-shot recently,” Izumi continues, "the one you won that award for back in university." A familiar discomfort shifts in Tenma’s throat, and he readjusts his hands around the mug. Where the hell are those censorship laws?

"And I ate all of those nuts you sent me."

“She said she liked it,” Izumi says, her too-loud voice crackling as she looks away from him, out at the sleeping city. “That she liked that one ghost character.” 

"The Ultimate Battle Ghost? He is pretty awesome."

“You know I’m not talking about that one.” 

“No, I don’t know,” Tenma snaps. “There’s more than one ghost, and you didn’t specify.” Izumi goes quiet. Tenma takes another sip of the tea. He doesn’t even like tea. Izumi knows that he doesn’t like tea. 

In the morning, Izumi has left for some destination Tenma forgets. For the gym, for the laundromat, maybe for the veterinary clinic to see if her cat is indeed possessed.

"I’d break up with her over the cat," Tenma says to Eri as he eats a measly breakfast standing in the kitchen, checking his phone for the time. Maybe he shouldn’t say that. But if this were a relationship that wasn’t going to last, Izumi would have jetted back to Canada by now. Off to spend her time outside the office paddling the Yukon, hunting the aurora borealis, freezing all her digits off in Calgary, Edmonton, or Ottawa. 

"If you say so," Eri says from the kotatsu through a mouthful of sugary cereal. She’s still in her pajamas, her short hair messy across her forehead. Tenma squints at her 

"Would my primary care physician recommend I eat that stuff?" He asks. Eri rolls her eyes. 

"No shot you have a primary care physician,” she says, leaning hard into the you. 

"Hypothetically."

"Hypothetically, you should get one," Eri says. "Mangakas are known for having weird-ass health problems. No sleep, bad diets, stressful work environment." 

"I can promise you my work environment’s a lot less stressful than it is here," Tenma says, "unlike that thing, my editor is only trying to murder me, like, twenty five percent of the time." The cat, which has seemingly not been taken to the veterinarian, hisses at him from where it’s winding itself around Eri’s hip.

"Yeah, I know,"Eri says, shrugging as she reaches out to pet the cat’s head, causing it to dart towards the open bathroom door. "But… you know Izumi. He was a little bitty stray, and she thought she could save him."

"Nobody can save that thing, it’s possessed." Tenma places his dishes in the sink. “I’ve got to go, train leaves in twenty." 

"I got you more reference stuff," Eri says, gesturing towards a shopping bag leaning against the wall beside the door, "please keep all your manga anatomically correct.”

"Have you seen what sells, Yoshida-san? All these guys with bendy bones and super powers? Anatomically correct is old news." Tenma shoulders on his backpack, grabs the bag from the floor regardless. "Thanks, though. And tell Izumi I said thanks for letting me stay." 

"Tell her yourself," Eri says. Tenma flips off the cat, which peeks out from the bathroom to glare at him, yellow eyes saying I win as Tenma closes the door. 

The old couple across the aisle from Tenma on the Shinkansen are giving one another the silent treatment, the woman staring pointedly out the window, the man pointedly at his newspaper. Maybe they’re on the way to meet a child he didn’t know he had. Maybe one of them had blurted out some long-buried family secret while at the station. Maybe both intend to divorce the other and are waiting for the appropriate time to bring it up. Maybe the train car lights will flicker, they’ll be plunged into darkness, and when the power comes back one will be dead, and an enterprising detective will spring up from the back row to take charge of the investigation. Maybe Tenma will become a suspect. 

He leans back in his seat, grabbing the bag from Eri off the floor, books and resources pillaged from the discard section of the medical school library and from specialists updating their office decor. She’d accumulated a lot since the last time he’d visited, which makes sense, seeing as that was ages ago. There’s a chart about the anatomy of the ankle, another the outer and inner ear. A fat book about the endocrine system full of many a case study, which would really make Tenma look like a murder suspect. He folds down a corner to remember one page for later and goes to shove the book back in the bag. But it catches on something thin and flimsy, so Tenma jostles the contents and takes out the offender. 

He’s going to have to take this whole censorship law thing into his own hands. Maybe burn the thing when he’s off the train and offer cash rewards to whoever turns in their copies. Shonen Vie Magazine 2011 Rookie Awards Edition. In smaller print, bottom righthand corner, Takahashi-kun Talks to Ghosts by Udai Tenma. Honorable Mention. 

The Ultimate Battle Ghost stares up at him with poorly-drawn intensity from the corner of the cover where he’d been shoved to make room for the actual winners. His eyes are too veiny for a ghost’s, which probably don’t have blood, and the muscles in his face are all guesswork. Rookie Tenma would have benefitted from those medical school books. 

He moves to shove the magazine back into his bag so he won’t have to look at the Ultimate Battle Ghost anymore, but his hands fumble, and it drops onto the empty seat beside him, pages falling open at a well-worn crease. The ugly face of the Ultimate Battle Ghost is nowhere to be seen. He and his embroidered yukata and his Giant Flaming Super Ghost Sword are gone. Instead, a two page spread of a mostly-empty auditorium, titular Takahashi-kun in his soccer uniform standing on stage left, another figure on stage right— hovering, limbs spooling out at the ends so Tenma didn’t have to draw the hands or feet. Unlike the Ultimate Battle Ghost, this ghost has no flaming sword, no sculpted abs or well-maintained translucent facial hair. Just a small figure, once a boy, with a youthful face and a whisper of a birthmark about his left eyebrow— 

Tenma shoves the magazine back into the bag, sure to squash it with the endocrine book lest the Ultimate Battle Ghost somehow force the pages open with his bulging biceps. 

Once back in Tokyo, he dumps his backpack, turns on the coffee maker, and spends the remainder of the weekend glued to his swivel chair, takeout containers accumulating on one side of the desk as inked pages accumulate on the other. It’s a burst of single-minded focus. Tenma pours himself another cup of coffee in his Rocket Road Rangers mug and dumps in another mountain of sugar, scribbling down what will become Zombie Knight Zom’bish in a caffeine-induced haze. Slaps it down on Akaashi’s desk Monday morning.

“Here you are, Akaashi-san,” he says through his fatigue. “I took your advice.”  

-Middle-

The Zombie Knight Zom’bish serialization launch party is held not on a yacht or in a castle, but in the same hotel event space that had hosted Tenma’s college friend’s unfortunate wedding ceremony the previous year. The lights are very bright, the wallpaper is very floral, and a cardboard cutout of Zombie Knight Zom’bish guards the finger food. 

“He’s quite the looker,” Tenma’s friend from the Power Princess and Power Puppy team says to him and Akaashi, taking another selfie with cardboard Zom’bish and forcing Tenma to hold her paper plate of antipasto eyeballs and cocktail sausage severed fingers. “Senga-sensei says that if ya get popular enough she’s down fer a crossover.” 

“You’re going to have to power scale Power Puppy,” Tenma tells her. 

“He’s already a mutant. Zom’bish can sic ‘im on some of those boars.” 

“I believe that Power Puppy is a member of the terrier group, and therefore genetically indisposed for that task,” Akaashi says, holding his electric green Zombie Serum mixed drink. “If a crossover were to occur, a breed such as the Tibetan Mastiff might be more appropriate.” The Power Puppy assistant chokes on one of her antipasto eyeballs. 

“Yer editing the wrong manga, Akaashi-san,” she says. “We’ve been toyin’ with the idea of a dog show arc, you want to come on and consult? Senga-sensei’s been lookin’ fer any excuse to shoehorn in the Clumber Spaniel.”

“I’m more partial to setters,” Akaashi says. 

“And I’m more of a cat person,” Tenma adds, which neither of them seems to hear. 

It’s an anticlimactic, corporate culmination to what is not an anticlimactic, corporate line of work. Tenma is a Mangaka, now a serialized Mangaka: its’t this supposed to be more exciting? If they were having this party on a dock beside a marina he’d definitely feel more like a serialized Mangaka. Or if it involved the unveiling of a screen in Shinjuku, Zombie Knight Zom’bish staring down at the pedestrians with his patchwork face, the crow companion on his shoulder leering at tourists and salarymen, flapping its stunningly well-drawn wings. How are Serialized Mangakas even supposed to feel? Maybe he should ask Senga-sensei what they’d served at the Power Princess and Power Puppy event other than the obvious Power-Up Biscuit, and if that party had been thrown on a yacht. 

“They had the launch party in the same space you got married,” Tenma tells his university friend across the izakaya table, who laughs through a mouthful of tempura. 

“Bad omen,” he says. “Hopefully Zom’bish doesn't end in bitter divorce.” 

“It’s insane that you’re divorced,” someone else laughs, leaning across the table to physically enter the conversation, divorcing himself from the sports chatter happening on the opposite end. “You shouldn’t even be married at our age let alone divorced.” 

“Not a bad idea for a manga,” Tenma says, and the group collectively groans. “I’m serious! It would be called I’m Too Young to be Divorced and its Ruining my Dating Life!” 

“I’d murder you if you weren’t paying,” 

“Who said I’m paying?” 

Tenma hasn’t seen most of them since the aforementioned wedding, and probably won’t see them until the next wedding, or engagement party, or on the off chance that one of them gets a manga serialized in Shonen Vie. He’d blinked and they’d all become adults. And adults are busy with jobs that require you to wear something around your neck: ties, stethoscopes, lanyards. Busy with girlfriends who are also busy with jobs but probably aren’t required to wear ties.

That, and these people definitely hang out without him. Not that Tenma blames them. Back in university he hadn’t been particularly good company, especially after he broke that window, left without fixing it, and forgot to send the money for the repair. 

“I hate to ask this,” one of them says as they mingle outside near the front entrance, waiting on somebody’s taxi, on stragglers in the bathroom, on the steady spring rain to let up. “But my nephew’s a huge fan. If you could sign something for him I’d be his favorite forever.” 

“Asking for my autograph?” Tenma snorts, “You can just admit you’re a fanboy, you know. Nothing I’m not used to.” 

“Yeah right,” the guy laughs, tugging that week’s addition from his company branded backpack and holding it out alongside a marker. “His name’s Ren.” 

“You don’t need to give me a fake name to keep your cover.”

“Hilarious.” The guy says. “It’s good, though, really. Your horses have gotten a lot better. I don’t know if it’s what I expected you to be writing, but it’s cool.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tenma ask, looking up from the signature— his signature: who made him important enough to ever sign his signature? 

“You know,” the guy says, long and tentative, and something shifts again in Tenma’s throat. “Just… you’ve got, like… a unique perspective, and all.” 

“Yeah, well,” Tenma says, closing the magazine and handing it back, "You think Ren wants to read about all that?”

The guy gulps. Another reason Tenma doesn’t hang out with these people. They don’t get it, these Tokyo natives, whose lives are here, here, here, always been here. Who see it all as a neat bit of backstory, who only know the Tenma they’d been introduced to through an honorable mention manga they never should have read, and Tenma never should have written. 

“No, I guess not,” the guy says. “He’s been reading all your stuff, though, and his favorite is that ghost one from back in the day.” 

Tenma should mention that the nephew could earn some pocket money if he turns over whatever copy of that he has, or reports the bootleg website to the authorities. But the bell behind them jangles as the rest of the group pushes out into the rainy afternoon, and people are stumbling over their own feet, opening umbrellas, and shouting farewells and congratulations over the screech of rubber on wet roadway and the steady pummel of rain. 

Maybe Tenma should feel bad that he catches Akaashi at the elevator, seeing as Akaashi’s already changed into his orthopedic sneakers, but he really doesn’t. If Akaashi wants him showing up at a reasonable hour, he should grant him some more reasonable deadlines. 

“Oh. Udai-sensei,” Akaashi says, with all the delight of an old man up past his bedtime. “I did not think I would be seeing you today.”

“Well, it’s your lucky day, Akaashi-san, I made room in my schedule.” Tenma follows him back through the office, retracing Akaashi’s route around cubicles and conference rooms to his desk near the back, where Tenma drops his stack of pages and goes to kick up his shoes before remembering that the soles are wet, and that Akaashi might murder him if he gets water on Zom’bish. 

“While I have you,” Akaashi says, opening one of his desk drawers and pulling out a slim manilla folder, holding it out to Tenma, “the design team has completed the last round of approvals if you would like to take a look.” 

Tenma almost expects to find, inside, instructions on which parking garage or alleyway to report to at midnight and with how much money in cash. But instead, a glossy print copy of that weeks Shonen Vie cover: Zombie Knight Zom’bish staring out at him from the center of the page, arm in patchwork arm with Rusty from Rocket Road Rangers. 

That shouldn’t be possible. Rocket Road Rangers is a real manga. With a multi-season anime and a movie reboot in the works. A Uniqlo collaboration and children’s stationary sets. Tenma’s father reads Rocket Road Rangers, if only because he grew curious as to what could possibly be so important that his son’s friends would pound at the screen door once a week at sunrise, and so important that Tenma would already be dressed, throwing his toothbrush into the sink for Izumi to clean up later, already be halfway out the door. 

It looks… off. Not that the Rocket Road Rangers mangaka could ever draw something that looks off, but still. Zom’bish looks simultaneously better in this style but also like a child has taped in their own drawing. Curious to see how it would look next to the work of the pros. But this is real. And soon, the same magazine will be sold at newsstands, book stores, supermarkets. Zombie Knight Zom’bish and Rocket Road Rusty sitting together among the tabloids, the car magazines, the home improvement catalogues, the chapstick, the newspapers, the Kit-Kat bars. 

"Are you not satisfied with the cover, Udai-san?" Akaashi asks. “I thought you would be delighted. Are you not partial to Rocket Road Rangers?” 

“No, I am. It’s good. It’s awesome, actually,” Tenma says, still staring at where Rusty’s tattooed arm meets with Zom’bish’s detachable one. “I just reeeally have to pee.” And he pushes the Classified Mission folder back into Akaashi’s hands— Akaashi can go meet the bastard at midnight— and spins towards the hall. Finds himself alone in the echoey tiled bathroom, staring at himself in the streaky, recently-cleaned mirror. The bags under his eyes make him look not unlike the central character on this week’s Shonen Vie cover. 

So this must be what it feels like to be a serialized Mangaka. How he would have felt on a yacht or underneath Shinjuku LEDs. It can’t be real. That can’t be his Zom’bish. This can’t be the work of the same Tenma who had laid on his kitchen floor making staple-bound manga volumes with Izumi’s stationary in the same way an aspiring ballerina might attempt a pirouette. Lopsided footwork, tipping to one side, messy and wild with none of the refinement, yet so satisfied by the feeling. The feeling of being able to aspire to something, the feeling of one day, that will be me. Boyhood dream still boyhood. 

Until it isn’t. And there’s not a single person in this stupid wonderful city who remembers any of that. There’s not even any proof of it— that stolen stationary, those children's drawings, Tenma’s rendition of Rocket Road Rangers Rusty taped to cereal box cover beneath Nakata’s neat letterhead— it’s all in the belly of a whale, or serving as cave decorations for many a moray eel, or washed up against the Canadian seashore or one of those islands made entirely of puffin poop.

Tenma threads a hand through his hair. He blots out a stain on his sweatshirt with sink water to very little result, rubs the bags under his eyes to even less of a result. How is it that Akaashi achieves his routine youthfulness? Should Tenma ask him for a tutorial? He should stop by a cosmetics store on his way back to his apartment and ask an employee to assist him with finding a concealer that matches his skin tone. 

Apparently, being a Serialized Mangaka whose character had appeared on the cover with Rocket Road Rusty doesn’t make you all that recognizable in public spaces. But then again, being a high school volleyball phenom doesn’t make you all that recognizable at high school volleyball tournaments, so there’s a high bar. 

“Look who decided to show up,” a voice says as Tenma climbs yet another level up, up, to where the group is sitting in the nosebleeds, Akiteru with his knobby elbows on his knobby knees. “Didn’t realize we were getting a celebrity appearance.” 

“Who knew your little volleyball cartoons would get you so far?" Someone else says, another one of his old teammates who leans forward from a few seats down, his pudgy daughter on his lap, her little hands in her mouth. 

"Remember our first year, when he’d doodle on the back of the score sheets?" Akiteru adds, “Coach was always so pissed. Bet he’d be eating his words now!" 

“Ukai-sensei’s kid still coaching?” Tenma asks, sitting down beside Akiteru and kicking his non-orthopedic sneakers up onto the railing in front of them. 

"Yeah, he is. So’s Takeda. You should really come visit, Udai, stop in at a practice or something.” 

"He’s not gunna do that," someone snorts, Saeko leaning forward from Akiteru’s other side to wave, to smile a toothy smile. "Jackass didn’t even come to my brother's wedding."

"You can't tell me to come to a wedding two weeks in advance and expect me to show up," Tenma says. In his defense, he wouldn’t have been able to go even if the wedding weren’t north of Sendai. He’d had deadlines that Akaashi had emphasized were neither malleable nor negotiable. That, and he’d been confused as to why he’d been included in the first place— he barely knows Saeko’s brother. 

"Come on, when’s the last time you deigned to visit us?" One of the others asks, defense ignored,  bouncing the toddler on his knee. “Too good for Miyagi now that you’re basically Eiichiro Oda?" 

"They keep me busy here," Tenma says, "like, human rights violations busy. They haven’t played yet, have they?” 

“Naw. The girls just got off the court, they’re up next.” 

Tenma takes his shoes off the railing to stand, lean forward, watch the Karasuno volleyball team take to the court in what look to be updated uniforms: white with black and orange detailing. A lot nicer than a mountain town high school can usually afford, but then again, the Karasuno volleyball program that exists now isn’t exactly the one of Tenma’s childhood. A school that’s produced an Olympian can’t afford to look shabby on a National stage. And from what Akiteru had said last time, when they’d sat in these same seats and watched Karasuno fall in the quarter finals, said Olympian has been generous with the proceeds from that godawful Muscle Milk commercial, so Karasuno High School now also has new gymnasium floors.

“So how are they looking this year?” He asks Akiteru. They must’ve lost that tall third year since the last time Tenma saw them play— he’d missed the tournament in January as Zom’bish was just getting off the ground, but had checked periodically on the results. 

“Real good,” Saeko answers in lieu. “I don’t think Ukai expected them to even qualify for this, they’re still learning how to play together and all.” 

Tenma sits back down, leans his cheek into his palm as the whistle sounds, as a boy on the opposite team steps up to serve, jittery in his purple and black uniform. They all look so young. They are so young, impossibly young. So much younger than Tenma had felt back then, when he’d been in their shoes, experiencing this city for the first time. He’d thought himself so adult. So ready to leave his old life behind for a brand spanking new one, so ready for what the world would throw at him. 

"I’m going to live there, you know," he’d said upon his return to Arata. Not to his parents, who would have brushed it off, not to Izumi, who he wouldn't have told even if she hadn't already left for Canada, even if she'd been at all communicative since. But standing underneath the wooden structure of the Arata fish market, bundled in his winter clothes, the three of them dumping ice atop spindle legged snow crabs, the dawn gray and bleak above them, the January winds rough off the sea. 

"One trip to Tokyo and you’re already talking like a city boy," Nakata had said, heaving another container of crabs up onto the collapsable table. "You’d miss the food too much, Udai. Where would you get your crabs?"

"I’m not planning on getting crabs." 

Nakata had sighed, a long, exaggerated sigh that swept his breath through the winter air as the third member of their trio snickered. 

"You walked right into that one," Iemoto had said. And then he’d paused, and Tenma had leaned his weight against the table, his gloves, no, mittens, against the plastic, as Iemoto stood there with his bag of ice cradled at his chest like a baby. "But Tenma, we knew that already." 

"Momo, quit dawdling," Nakata had snapped. "You’re killing the crabs."

"Aren't they already dead?" 

"Just… just dump the damn ice."

And they had stepped back into the routine, the routine they’d been walking through since boyhood. Back when they’d heave bags of ice over their heads, imitating powerlifters. Back when they, rightfully, weren't trusted unattended. Back when Tenma would chase the other two under tables, over coolers, around bug-eyed tuna and gape-mouthed yellowtail, waving around a crab like a marionette, King Killer Crab rises again! Iemoto’s little sister squealing, hiding behind one of the old women who stood ready to slap Tenma into obedience. 

The subject of Tokyo had been dropped. Nakata's sisters had appeared from the ocean like those shapeshifter seals Tenma liked to accuse them of being and had taken over the stand. So the three of them had escaped to hide out in the boat cabin, Iemoto conjuring that week's issue of Shonen Vie from his Mary Poppins pockets and flattening it across his legs, the two of them leaning in to read Rocket Road Rangers over his shoulders, still bundled in their winter coats. 

"Nii-san!" A voice had called, three pages in, and Iemoto had sighed, looking up from the magazine. 

"Go away, Ya-chan!" He'd yelled. But she was already there, arms crossed, in her sherpa lined coat and fashionable little boots because freezing to death would be preferable to not wearing pompoms and ruffles, even if said pompoms and ruffles might get fish guts all over them. 

"You took my money," she'd said, holding out an ungloved hand: because losing all her fingers would be preferable to not showing off her press-on manicure. 

"I didn't take your money." 

"Give it." 

"I didn't take anything." 

"Yeah, you did. Otou-san said split that bill, and I need my half now." 

"To do what, buy fish?"

"Ew, no." She'd crinkled her nose. "Just give it." 

"I can't. It's one bill.  It's not like I can just rip it in half." 

"Just go ask my sisters for change, Momo," Nakata had said, and Yasuha had grinned a slim, evil smile and gone, yeah, Momo, go ask Nakata-san, and Iemoto had leapt up, thrown the magazine at Tenma, and chased her out of the boat. Leaving Tenma and Nakata sitting there with Rocket Road Rangers, which they'd proceeded to continue reading because it wasn't like Iemoto hadn't already read it. He was incapable of waiting for anything. Incapable of not knowing something when he had the ability to know it. Incapable of even a moments hesitation when it came to opening that ominous box in the greek myth, even if it meant betraying his childhood best friends, betraying their sacred oath, betraying Rocket Road Rangers Rusty.

"You know I really mean it before," Tenma had said, eyes staring down at Rusty: Rusty in his no-sleeves shirt and ripped denim shorts wiping sweat from his forehead in the parched Australian outback. "About Tokyo. I'm going to live there." 

Nakata hadn’t said anything. The boat had swayed in the winter waves, ocean lapping against the hull, and Nakata had taken the magazine out of Tenma’s hands to get a better look. Conversation had turned to the story. To Rusty’s love interest, a topic they always disagreed on— Nakata believed Rusty should get with the childhood friend being held captive by the Scrub Sisters, whereas Tenma wanted him with the leader of the Outback Outlaws. Then, they moved on to the practicality of the modifications on Rusty’s Rocket Rover, and if they would be enough to defeat the Dingo King. 

"Another damn cliffhanger," Nakata had said, tossing the magazine back at Tenma. 

"We should really have learned by now." 

"Yeah, we really should've." Nakata had yawned. "We should go bail Momo out of crab duty, no way he didn't get roped in." He’d hopped up towards the door, but paused in the gap between cabin and deck, looking over his shoulder.

"Promise you’ll visit us," he’d said. "Alright? When you're off in Tokyo?" 

"Uh, you’ll have to come visit me," Tenma had scoffed. "You have to! It’s nothing like Sendai. You’ve never seen anything like it." 

"Yeah," Nakata had said, voice unsteady as the waves beneath them. "I’m sure I haven’t." And he’d leapt through the doorway, Tenma scrambling after him, another unshakable habit. 

The whistle peals out through the gymnasium, the Karasuno players below him whooping, Akiteru and Saeko on Tenma's left leaping to their feet, their friend with the baby clapping the baby’s hands together. Tenma blinks. Shit. He’s supposed to be normal— he’s in Tokyo for crying out loud, not Sendai. He looks to Akiteru and Saeko, their hands braced on the railing, pure delight worn on their faces. This is a big deal for them. Not just something they stop by for, slightly tweak their calendars. This is a day they plan for all year, their Tokyo Trip. After this, it’ll be back to Miyagi, back to Karasuno— where they’re from in a way Tenma will never be from somewhere again. They’d grown up there. Tenma had simply been their guest. 

“You alright over there, Udai?” Akiteru asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

“What? Oh, I’m fine, just tired, you know, the life of a Mangaka,” Tenma says, grinning at Akiteru as he leans back in his chair, crosses his arms behind his head as Karasuno rotates their lineup, prepares for the serve. “You seen that Hinata kid at all lately?” 

“He was at the wedding,” Saeko says bitterly. “He lives on the other side of the planet and he made it to the wedding.” 

“Sounds like he had more than two weeks’ notice,” Tenma says, as down below the Karasuno wing spiker leaps, leaps, for the hit.  

Like always, the interviewer asks basic, easy questions that Tenma’s answered before, and like always, Tenma does an impeccable job. Makes himself comfortable across from the interviewer, the recording device squarely between them, and channels Cartoon Tenma. Cartoon Tenma, his little author avatar that will adorn the Shonen Vie interview section smiling and animated, who doesn’t have bags under his eyes or shit in his hair or ever-present nausea in his stomach. Cartoon Tenma just beams out from the magazine pages, holds a pencil like a sword, and says, I used to want to be a volleyball player, but real-life me is short. And then, Cartoon Tenma erases his legs, and adjusts his proportions to make himself five meters tall, and goes maybe if I was this tall I wouldn’t be a mangaka, but hey— that’s life!

"Where did you draw inspiration for the world?" The interviewer asks, and Cartoon Tenma folds his hands behind his heads, grins all toothy at an irate looking Akaashi, and says something about how much he’d loved Road Rocket Rangers as a kid— you take somewhere ordinary, somewhere nobody has ever thought twice about, and you pull a new apocalyptic layer over it. 

“Although, it does get a bit monotonous drawing so many trees,” Cartoon Tenma adds. Maybe he should have set Zombie Knight Zom’bish on a Mediterranean island, or a beach somewhere near the equator. They could deal with zombie dolphins instead. They could have a beach episode where Zom’bish and the Genetics Professor wear bikinis. 

“And what was it that inspired this story?” The interviewer asks, and Cartoon Tenma spits out that pre-canned response, his five meter long legs folded as best they can be. I was on the train back from visiting my sister— actually, I was thinking of writing about her cat…

The interviewer peers at him from behind her notepad— a different interviewer than any of the previous ones. This one younger, wearing glasses, long bangs that nearly hide her eyes.

"And where does your sister live, Udai-sensei?" She asks. Off-script.

"Sendai," Tenma says, "too cold for me up there, thank you very much."

"Oh— are you from around there?”

Interviewers don’t usually make smalltalk. This is supposed to be just another interview, the same surface level questions, the same push, pull, ebb, flow. He stares at the interviewer, her fringe bangs, her innocent expression— but she’s a dumb kid at a hack zoo. Face against the glass, staring at the inbred tiger, loudly complementing its unique fur— hip dysplasia and shorter life expectancy be damned. 

"Yeah," he says, shortly. "I’m from Miyagi."

"Well, in relation to that, I wanted to ask about your first manga," the interviewer says. A massive detour from the script— a swerving off the highway and driving into the embankment from the script.

"Well, I’d afraid you’d be pretty disappointed," Cartoon Tenma tells her, eyes flickering to where Akaashi is on his cell phone, texting faster than Tenma realized any senior citizen capable of. “It was probably about killer robots devouring my elementary school gym teacher. And with extremely limited kanji usage." 

The interviewer chuckles. 

"What I meant to say," she continues, "is your first published work. You won a prize back in the 2011 rookie awards. It was a significant publication seeing as—"

Tenma’s not sure where it comes from. How Cartoon Tenma so easily snaps, and someone else entirely emerges. Something from the Tenma who kicked his foot into vending machines after losing matches, something from the Tenma who tore apart his university apartment, threw that three hole punch through that window he never paid to fix. He shoots up to his feet and slams the pause on the recording device.

“I’m not talking about any of that," he says, his voice a mallet. "And, honestly, it’s fucked up that you’re trying to sneak questions like that in, especially when I literally have the script." The interviewer just opens her mouth like a gulping carp, and Tenma shoves the recording device off the table, feels From Tokyo Akaashi and From Wherever-The-Fuck interviewer’s eyes on him, feels the buzz of the lights in his brain and his bones as the recording device clatters to the floor.

"I think we’re done here," He says, kicking the recording device for good measure. He ignores Akaashi’s stunned expression as he turns and pushes through the door. 

Tenma has reason to suspect that Akaashi might have gone to bat for him with the Shonen Vie human resources department, because somehow, the incident never comes up. Which it shouldn’t, because it wasn’t his fault. 

“You have no longer obligated to complete interviews for the foreseeable future,” Akaashi says a week or so later, thumbing through storyboards for Zom’bish’s upcoming arc, eyes never once leaving page. “Although in the event that they do resume, I will ask you to please handle your emotions a little more appropriately.” 

“And I ask that you get interviewers who can actually do their jobs,” Tenma says, earning him a glare. “Sorry, Akaashi-san. Yeah, I’ll behave. So what were you saying about the chapter?”

Akaashi pushes the photocopied mock-up of Zombie Knight Zom’bish Chapter 23: Ransom back across the desk, interlacing his fingers as though he’s about to deliver an ultimatum. Tenma gulps. 

“Although I am enjoying the concept of the bounty hunters,” Akaashi starts, “The way they are currently written, they do not feel like children.” 

"They’re not kids, though, they’re teenagers," Tenma says, “gotta give them a little credit, Akaashi-san. I bet you were a pretty mature teenager." 

Akaashi’s mouth twists into a curious expression, and Tenma leans his cheek into his hand, wondering if Akaashi’s lips will slip and he’ll reveal one of the small tidbits of personality he hides under his neutral clothing and boxy, practical glasses. All of his old-man secrets. 

"I was a rather naive teenager," Akaashi says after a moment. "One who thought a lot of fanciful things. These characters, they are first years, correct?"

"Yep. Well, they would be if there was still a functioning education system.”  

"They are quite melodramatic," Akaashi says, taking the papers and reading out one of the speech bubbles, which, in hindsight, does sound more like the musings of a tortured superhero than a fifteen year old. A great insight from a twenty-three year old who talks like he’s in his eighties. "Why make them so young if they’re serving the same purpose as any adult character?” If it’s to have Zom’bish reflect on what he’s lost, someone closer to his age would do." 

Tenma gulps. That was sort of the reasoning behind the teenage bounty hunters. To remind Zombie Knight Zom’bish of what it had been like to be young with his whole life ahead of him. With no idea that he would be spending his twenties as a walking corpse, a patchwork of other people. Desperately searching for the ones who had made him this way, and forcing them to turn him back to the way he’d been before. Turn the world back to the way it had been before. 

"Yeah, I should make them older," Tenma admits. 

"No," Akaashi says, "I believe their youthfulness can be a key aspect in the story. It demonstrates that this world is resilient. But they are in need of different characterization. Tell me, Udai-san, what were you like at fifteen?"

Although it sounds like a personal question, after the interview debacle there's no way it's meant as one. Even so. 

"I’m going to Karasuno," he’d told his friends. Told them before he’d told his parents, told them when he wasn’t bothering to write his sister. For telling Nakata and Iemoto anything was synonymous with knowing it in the first place. Fifteen year old Tenma, in his sweatshirt and basketball shorts, had gulped, and looked between the two of them. "I’m going to play on their volleyball team."

In the stretches of their many summertimes together, when Nakata wasn’t on his father’s fishing boat, Iemoto wasn't working one of his slew of odd jobs, and Tenma wasn’t at volleyball, they’d lay on their bellies on one another’s kitchen floors and scribble out manga ideas in hand-made notebooks. Class doodles and inside jokes extrapolated upon, codified in the form of crude scripts and sloppy drawings. They’d dream up the ideas together, but subdivide the tasks. Nakata, with his impeccable handwriting and above-grade-level kanji knowledge, would do the lettering. Tenma, of course, drew the characters. And versatile Iemoto would dictate the dialogue, draw the backgrounds, and break up Tenma and Nakata’s squabbling.  

There hadn’t been much cohesion within their body of work, besides the fact that they started normal, and ended with something outlandish: their year four teacher transforming into a purple polka-dotted eagle wearing a swim cap, scooping up her students in her tiger-stripe talons before getting hit by a meteorite. But there were no true stories that they could tell one another that the others didn’t already know so well that they could recite them, eyes closed, while diving into the beckoning, swollen river of their childhood, or the wide, inviting ocean. Words bubbling up verbatim from underneath the knife-cold water. 

Tenma, fifteen years old, had stood there— sneakers uneven in the sand, a gull singing somewhere in the distance, the ocean licking at the shore, and he’d waited for a reaction. Nervous fish swimming in his belly. 

"That’s a total haul," Nakata had said finally, "you’re going to need to learn how to mountain climb."

"I figured you’d go there," Iemoto had said, "and that mountain climbing sure will be good conditioning." 

He’d expected to miss them in high school as much as a fifteen year old can fathom missing someone. He hadn’t expected it to feel like missing two limbs. 

So the summer he was fifteen, his first high school summer, any moment that Tenma wasn’t at volleyball practice he was on his rickety, rusty bicycle, gears chirping together as he hunched over the handlebars, peddling furiously to their old haunts. The three of them made camp in a small patch of grass beside one of the winding roads that overlooked the bay. They’d linger for what felt like hours, days, suspended weeks and years, eating, laughing, passing Tenma’s volleyball between them, waving at the occasional car or bicycle. But for the most part, they swapped stories. Poured over the details of their respective classmates, teammates, teachers. For the first time in their lives not needing to invent anything.

Tenma blinks, and he’s back. No longer feels the direct sunlight spreading across his skin like poison oak, no longer tastes the tepid sodas and plastic-wrapped cream-filled puff pastries, no longer smells the fresh scent of fish, the ocean salt, no longer hears Iemoto’s lofty, lingering laughter, the rattling chain on Nakata’s bike. No, he’s back in the slick Tokyo office wearing a loose hoodie over a more climate-appropriate t-shirt, his hair down to his shoulders, his office lanyard strung around his neck. It’s no longer summertime. One of his old friends no longer speaks to him and the other one is dead. And although he’s been searching in manga and television and volleyball stadiums, he has yet to find anything that feels more magical than that summer. 

He’s not exactly sure how to explain this all to Akaashi, though. So he just stands, takes the stack of papers and nods. 

"I hear you Akaashi-san," he says. "Make them feel fifteen."

Izumi meets him for a late lunch after getting into Tokyo for a work trip, and Tenma blows off finishing the necessary edits for his next chapter to join her. He asks Izumi why coming all the way to Tokyo is necessary for her job, when just about everything can be accomplished virtually ya know, with all the new tech these days. 

"Face to face communication is important," Izumi says, looking at him from behind her menu. "And I haven’t seen you face-to-face since you became famous."

"I don’t think enough people read Zom’bish to consider myself famous," Tenma tells her. Which is true. Readership is slowly but surely falling. The Mega Mutant Zombie Bear in the chapter he’s currently neglecting will definitely have the readers buying back in, and when he finishes editing the Teenage Bounty Hunters’ dialogue, the boys ages eleven to seventeen are sure to relate to them and deem Zombie Knight Zom’bish worthy of their time. 

"Still," Izumi says. "You know, there’s a manga shop in Arata now. Bet the owner would be interested in hosting something."

Tenma stares down at the menu. How the fuck is there a manga shop in Arata? There are hardly people to sell manga to, and the people who are there are a generations older than that sweet sweet demographic of boys ages eleven to seventeen.

"Where is it?" He asks Izumi. Despite himself.  

"I don’t know how to describe," Izumi says, "it’s in the neighborhood past the athletic center. But I don’t know the road name— it’s a new road."

Of course that’s the answer. 

"I’m ordering the pork," he tells Izumi, who just sighs. They eat, and Tenma lets Izumi do the talking— about the work that’s brought her here, about her evil cat, about Eri, and Eri’s job, and about how they’re not renewing their lease at the end of the year.

"Oh, so the neighbors were spies?" Tenma asks. 

"They were never spies." 

"That’s what they want you to think," Tenma says, and Izumi rolls her eyes, takes a bite of her salad. 

In an effort to delay returning to the Teenage Bounty Hunters, Tenma gives Izumi a tour. She’s so rarely in Tokyo, and when she is, she’s usually busy. So he shows her the outside of the building where he works, we can’t go in. If my editor sees me not working he’ll stab me. He shows her the train station he commutes in from, his apartment too far out of the way. He shows her his favorite coffee place where many a Zombie Knight Zom’bish storyboard has been sketched, and where the manager lets him stay past closing under the condition that Tenma help her and whoever else is on duty wipe down the tables or mop up the floors. 

"I think that sounds like a labor violation," Izumi tells him as they stand outside the shop, Izumi with her free coffee the manager had insisted she take when Tenma had introduced her as his sister. 

"You want to hear labor violation? You should hear my deadline schedule." He takes a sip of his coffee— which had not been free. 

She asks if they’re close to the Sky Tree, which they really aren’t, so Tenma provides an improvised walking tour of some old imperial gardens instead. Since moving here, Tenma still hasn’t done most of the things a tourist might do. He hasn’t gone to the Sky Tree observation deck or the more famous of the temples. Hasn’t visited the history or the Ghibli museums. He has been to the zoo— but only recently, with his sketchbook, in an attempt to study some animal anatomy for Zom’bish. If only Eri were a veterinarian or a zoologist instead of a surgeon, he’d have better references. But these gardens are so near his workplace, and he’d always been curious about the tour busses parked outside, so he’d stood in the queue a few years back, read from all the pamphlets, meandered through the trails. 

It’s not his favorite park in the city. To Tenma, it often feels sterile, seeing as people aren’t allowed on the grass or near the well-manicured trees. No families with little kids, no grades schoolers on bikes, no dogs. But it does feel like something out of a manga. Dotted with Edo-period tea houses and old wooden bridges, yet surrounded by skyscrapers. A world within a world. He points out the landmarks to Izumi as they walk, pretending to read from the pamphlet as his made-up histories become progressively more outlandish. The number of lawns the same number of sons the Shogun had fathered. The paint colors on the tea houses having been sourced from flowers only found in scarce vernal pools dotted across the Australian outback. The ponds having been built for the Shogun’s pet shark.

"See, this tree is far superior to the Sky Tree," Tenma tells Izumi, gesturing to one beside the bridge they’ve just crossed, tall and lush with bunches of hand-like leaves. "Story says that the Shogun peed on it, and it shot up just like this. Can’t say that about the Sky Tree now, can you?" 

Izumi rolls her eyes, turning away from him, and Tenma follows her gaze across the small stretch of grass that now separates them from the mouth of the Sumida River. He gulps, shoves his crumpled pamphlet into the pockets of his shorts. He hadn’t realized that he’d been leading them to water like some sort of diviner. 

But Izumi continues forward, and Tenma follows. Joins her on a faded wooden bench overlooking the river. 

"So yeah," he says, as he sits down beside her, looking out at the water. "This is my super fancy famous mangaka life in Tokyo. It’s extremely glamorous." 

"So I see," she says absently, turning away from him and pushing her hair out of her face, hand shielding her eyes from the sun as she stares out at the river. It’s quiet on the water, save for a few fishing boats zipping off in the distance, and a fleet of ferries docked near where the park meets the city, rocking in the low current. 

"If you squint," he says, "you can see Tokyo Disney." He waits for Izumi’s reaction, for her to roll her eyes, or, on the off chance that she believes him, ask where she should look. He waits, but she continues to just stare off at the fuzzy horizon. "Nee-san?" He says, louder, and Izumi startles, however slightly, and turns to look at him. 

"Oh. Sorry," she says, hand reflexively moving to her hearing aid. He hadn’t realized she’d had that off— but that doesn’t make sense. They’ve been talking all day. 

"Is that getting worse?" He blurts out. Normally, he doesn’t ask Izumi about that sort of thing. Her rigid independence hasn’t melted away entirely, especially not around him. But to his surprise, she nods. 

"Yeah," she says. "Eri thinks I should get an implant. For my bad side at least."

"Eri’s scalpel-happy. She just wants you to get surgery," Tenma says, keeping in mind to keep himself turned towards her, so she can see his mouth. "What does she even know? She’s not some, like, audiologist."

"No. But… I guess she tells me what I don’t want to hear sometimes."

"Or what you can’t hear."

Izumi slaps him lamely with the back of her hand, knuckles making half-hearted contact with his shoulder.

"Too soon?" He asks, and Izumi shakes her head. 

“No. Oddly enough, I think this is the one thing I’m at peace with." She shrugs, leaning backwards on the bench, tilting her chin upwards. "It’s really pretty here," she says. ”Thanks for the tour. Although, I didn’t see any of that stuff you were telling me about in the guide. Weird." 

"They just don’t know the history like I do."

Izumi chuckles and Tenma stares back out at the water. Somehow, it still comforts him, in some sick way. Makes him very aware that he lives on an island, very conscious of the shape of the city. It reminds him that he’s a small ant in a larger colony, that the ordinary world is stubbornly, unflinchingly beautiful. 

It’s not like the world in Zombish, turned ugly by the evil scientists, a physical manifestation of the dangers that lurk. Maybe the real world is slightly more evil in that department. The things he’d found such a comfort can lunge at him without warning. A childhood dog springing forward, sinking its teeth into his arm. 

"I didn’t realize the river was right here," he says to Izumi. She must be thinking, like he sometime thinks, about what she would do in the event of an emergency. Izumi shrugs. 

"I know," she says. “I’m getting used to it." She pauses, glancing over at him. "Thanks for the tour, though, really. You’ve built a nice life for yourself here. We’re all very proud of that."

Tenma looks down at his sneakers, feeling distinctly unlike her. What is he supposed to say to that? What is he supposed to say, after all these years? He’d only come here seeking change, wanting to live somewhere where the shops stayed open past eight, where there was more to do than ride his bike past fishing docks and factories, more to do than invent new and better and more interesting worlds. Eighteen year old Tenma had called his hometown boring, thought himself above it, packed up, and left. For what was little Arata town compared to this? Compared to elevated trains and neon lights and thirteen million people? 

"I still like it. The ocean, I mean," Tenma admits quietly, looking back to Izumi so she’ll be able to see his face, read his lips, so he’ll be able to tell if she hears him. "How sick is that?"

"That’s not sick, Tenma. That’s a good thing."

"It doesn’t feel like a good thing."

He doesn’t mean to say this as quickly as he does, like some sort of reflex. Izumi sighs in that way she does, squinting at him as if it’s her eyesight that’s the problem. 

"You’re off," she says. "Like, more than usual.”

“I’m not off,” Tenma says, looking away. “It’s just…” the boats rock in the river, and the cat laying on Tenma’s chest stands, releasing the pressure of its body. “I think maybe you were right. That maybe I don’t like writing about zombies.” 

He shouldn’t have said it. He knew better than to say that. He doesn’t even believe it— of course he likes writing about zombies. But the weight off his chest, the stopper undone, the dam wall letting in the water, he continues. 

“But what else am I even supposed to write about when it’s all I really think about? And I can’t even commit to the bit. I can’t make it interesting or deep of I’m going to get self-conscious. It just… I don’t want this analyzed against my whole life. I just want it to exist as, like, any other manga, and not, like, be constantly compared to something I obviously wish never fucking happened." 

Izumi definitely hears him, her hand at her ear. But Izumi is no editor, she is no storyteller— she traffics in mergers and conglomerates and exchange rates and cultural workplace differences, not zombies and evil scientists and hot genetics professors and reanimated boars. She sits there, looking at him, Tenma standing from the bench, hands in his sweatshirt pocket. 

“Do you want my two cents?” She says at last. 

“Go for it.” She can’t possibly have anything worse to say about Zombie Knight Zom’bish than Akaashi has ever said.

"It’s depressing," Izumi says. "Eri thinks so too. And it’s not a story that lends itself to being depressing. He’s a funny character, but he doesn’t get a lot of opportunity to be funny. Or even very happy. See… obviously I know that Zom’bish-san is going to turn back to human or whatever, but what’s even the point if he’s just a miserable guy? What’s he going to do then?” 

"Get with the Genetics Professor."

"See, but those two barely talk," Izumi says, "It’s just… Zom’bish saving the Professor from a mutant dog, or a mutant wolf, or a mutant boar—"

"There’s going to be a mutant bear in the next issue." 

"Oh good grief, no. Please, no," Izumi sighs. "I think you need to let them enjoy themselves, just once. To show what the life they’re fighting for would look like." She pauses. "And when Zom’bish is over, I think you need new source material. No more zombies and ghosts. It doesn’t need to be all… sunshine and rainbows, but I think you need to write about something you love.” 

Tenma glances at her as she stares ahead towards the river, and he turns his head so he can look too. At the tide moving slowly in, at the boats, an elegant cruise liner, at the gulls swarming around the fishing vessels, begging for sardines. He’s not really sure that there’s anything he loves, anymore— loves in the way he used to love things, like he had loved the sea and loved his friends and loved his sport— without the fear it would all one day go away. But he can’t say that, not even to Izumi. 

"You should change career paths," he says instead. "Edit manga. Stop with this… cross cultural communication or whatever." 

"No thank you," Izumi says. “Anyway. It was mostly Eri’s opinion. Not mine.” 

The hardest part about adjusting the Teenage Bounty Hunters’ dialogue turns out to be admitting to Akaashi that it’s not going to be done on time. 

"Sorry, Akaashi-san, inspiration strikes when it does, what can I say," Tenma says over the phone, sounding as chipper as Cartoon Tenma. 

"I still need the pages by Wednesday, Udai-sensei." 

"So, about that… Look, it’s not going to happen. But hey, quality over quantity, am I right?"

Akaashi doesn’t reply, definitely seething at his fancy oak desk, rotary phone in hand, apartment illuminated by dripping wax candle. 

"Glad we had this chat,” Tenma says before Akaashi can say anything, “I’ll call you when I’m done!"

"Wait—"

But Tenma’s already hung up the phone. He ignores the ringing and turns to look back at the red-penned pages of Zombie Knight Zom’bish, the teenage bounty hunters and their wonky dialog, at the growling bear that’s sure to infuriate Izumi. 

Okay. Make them feel fifteen. 

So he closes his eyes and remembers. Remembers that summer and the way Iemoto would stand up on his bike waving, leap off, let it clatter, a wheel spinning upturned in their air, had to get out before my dad made me take my little sister with me, and he’d throw Tenma a soda that, shaken from the bike ride, would fizz and overflow upon opening, sweet and sticky on his hands. 

Soon enough, it’s not a chapter about taking down a mutant bear. They do do that: Tenma isn’t scrapping what he has, Zom’bish saving the day yet again, swooping the Genetics Professor to safety. But afterwards, the Teenage Bounty Hunters roast the bear on a spit over a fire. One of them has a guitar, which The Professor plays. The Professor knows so few songs, so they all sing along to the chord progressions of a pop hit from a world that still had recording studios, and the Bounty Hunters slot in rude words. Those with working digestive tracks eat big chunks of smoked bear, seasoned with herbs from the Bounty Hunters’ makeshift garden. Zombie Knight Zom’bish lowers his guard, smiles as much as one whose face is sewed together like a quilt can smile. The crow pecks at the bear bones. The Professor strums the guitar. The bounty hunters bicker and play a game that involves mock-fencing with flaming sticks. Tenma likes the way the glow of the fire looks on page. 

For the first time, Tenma waits in the office until Akaashi is done reading. Maybe the quality of the chapter will outweigh Akaashi’s simmering anger about the missed deadline. Akaashi emerges, rubbing his glasses on a microfiber cloth, and hands the manuscript back to Tenma. 

"So?" Tenma asks. Anticipation swimming. 

"No notes." Akaashi says. “Clean it up, and we’ll publish as is."

When the chapter comes out, for the first time Tenma goes out and purchases a copy from a newspaper stand instead of getting one from the office. "I wrote this," he tells the cashier, who just nods and takes his credit card, which declines, so Tenma digs up cash instead. 

"Read my chapter," he tells Izumi over the phone. 

"Already have," she says back. "I thought I told you to get rid of the bear?"

"I want to do, like, a flash-back arc next," he tells Akaashi one afternoon, during one of their pre-scheduled meetings where Akaashi books an entire conference room for the two of them because he prefers not to leave the floor. "We don’t know much about Zom’bish’s life before all this."

"Udai-sensei," Akaashi says slowly. In a careful tone Tenma’s knows too well. He’s all too familiar with how people speak when they’re about to bare bad news. 

"Huh? You don’t think I should?"

"No. I believe that to be a solid idea," Akaashi says plainly, "but we have a meeting this afternoon with the higher-ups. About our readership." 

The higher-ups are blunt and to the point. 

Despite everything, they say, they’re going to need to discontinue some of the newer mangas. They need an immediate hit, they say, and Zombie Knight Zom’bish has not been an immediate hit. Apparently, there’s not enough marketable characters, and nobody that boys ages eleven to seventeen relate to. 

Tenma brings up the Teenage Bounty Hunters, who he neglects to mention will be leaving after this arc. This doesn’t seem to have any sway. 

"Nothing’s finalized," the higher-ups say, "we’ll be making this call later in the week. We’re just letting everybody know." Like always, Tenma prepares for the worst. Prepares for the call he knows is coming. 

Still, when the phone rings three days later, he’s jolted by the noise, and panicky as he grabs it off the kitchen counter. Despite having waited for this, despite having been expecting it, the bad news devastates all the same. 

If Akaashi is surprised to see him at the Shonen Vie office at such an odd hour, he doesn’t show it. Instead, with a certain level of care and understanding that Tenma hadn’t realized he was capable of, Akaashi leads him away from the desk and out of the office, down to a coffee shop where Tenma mopes, and Akaashi sits, back-straight, and talks in a slow-moving voice that tiptoes. About how he regrets he could not do more to save Zombie Knight Zom’bish from this fate, but how they’ve been allotted seven more chapters to wrap things up. 

"In the meantime," Akaashi tells him, "you can come up with something else. Something only you can write."

But the only thing that makes Tenma particularly unique here, the only thing that sets his voice apart, is a tragedy he doesn’t talk about, and doesn’t think he’s fully capable of writing about, and knows he shouldn’t write about. Nakata had made that clear so many years ago— you have no right to this, Udai. No right to any of it. You weren’t even fucking here. Just go back to your fancy life in Tokyo. Just leave like you did last time. 

Maybe he’ll just have to write Help! My Girlfriend Owns a Cat from Hell. Maybe boys ages eleven to seventeen don’t need to be his audience anymore. Maybe he can revisit Warrior Dragon: Midair Collision sans the necromancers. If only he were halfway decent at drawing dragons.

"There’s nothing only I can write," he tells Akaashi, who seems unconvinced. He continues to poke, as if Tenma has thousands of good ideas that he’s just forgotten about. He asks if there were any hobbies from childhood, something he knew the ins and outs of and could introduce to the world. But Tenma’s childhood had been normal, despite ending horribly. There’s no material there to mine that isn’t going to shatter him into thousands of pieces. Everything good has been permanently poisoned by unintelligible grief. 

The coffee arrives, and Tenma busies himself with stirring in sugar cubes. So much so that he almost doesn’t hear Akaashi. 

"Tohoku," he hears, and, then, "are there any unusual traditions there that you could write a manga about?"

It doesn’t seem like Akaashi is poking where someone with less tact would poke. He’s not asking Tenma to spill. Which is good— because this is not the time to be saying, yeah, I’m from this little city called Arata. Ever heard of it? I wrote about it one and have regretted it ever since. It’s also not the time for Tenma to find out if Akaashi had known some of this all along. He doesn’t want that confirmed. 

"It was all normal," Tenma says instead, "maybe a little rural from your point of view, being from Tokyo and all."

"Perhaps. But I do enjoy Miyagi," Akaashi says, and Tenma looks up at him from where he’s slightly hunched over, sipping his nearly-overflowed coffee, the sugar cubes having forced the liquid upwards. "I have connections there. A friend I met though my high school club." 

Tenma lifts his head from the coffee cup. So there is a portion of Akaashi’s life in which he isn’t an eighty year old. Although eighty year olds probably do enjoy the countryside with friends from their past. 

"What club were you in?" Tenma asks, because Akaashi started it. Probably some intellectual thing like literature or politics, crossword puzzles or sudoku. Maybe some fancy, useless language, like Latin or French.

"I played volleyball." 

If Tenma had had any of the coffee in his mouth, he would have spat it out. He must have misheard. 

"You played volleyball?" Akaashi is tall, so maybe it makes a bit of sense. But other than that… Akaashi has never seemed particularly competitive, or particularly athletic, with his frumpy clothes and chunky glasses. 

"People don’t tend to think that of me. But yes, I did."

"Akaashi-san, I played volleyball too," Tenma says hurriedly, "like, really played. Went to Spring Nationals and everything."

Akaashi raises his eyebrows, resting his hands around his coffee mug. 

"As did I."

Tenma stares at him. How— how, after all this time, had that never come up?

"Seriously? And for a Tokyo team— you must’ve been real good." He does the math, his age, minus Akaashi’s. Akaashi would have played around the same time as Hinata. 

"We were," Akaashi says slowly. "Udai-san, may I ask what school you played for?" 

"Hmm, you probably wouldn’t know ‘em. They weren't a powerhouse or anything," Tenma says, laughing, laughing, somehow, when just moments ago he’d been moping. The sheer incredulity of it. "It’s called Karasuno."

Akaashi looks as though Tenma had, in Zom’bish fashion, detached his arm and clubbed him with it. Staring across the table, mouth slightly open. This is not the reaction Tenma gets when he tells people he’s from Arata. Those are different. Quieter, more awkward. A reaction to all of the larger implications about what a person has seen and what a person has lost. Having gone to Karasuno rarely illicits any reaction at all— it’s in the mountains, as is most of its student body, and nobody has ever heard of it. 

And Akaashi says something that nobody, nobody has ever said. 

"Of course I know Karasuno."

The waiter brings them more coffee. Tenma adds more sugar cubes. The two of them lean back against the plush seating and talk about high school volleyball for at least an hour, maybe two, maybe three. Tenma reminisces about his bad temper, about his old-man coach, his son took over, correct? Akaashi asks, which is something that nobody from Tokyo has ever known before, or has any business knowing. 

They talk about the pros— Tenma watches the national team out of loyalty to their Karasuno Olympian, but Akaashi closely follows a V League team out in Osaka, where one of his former teammates plays.

"Would ya believe it, Akaashi-san, if I told you I was a middle blocker?" Tenma asks, swirling sugar cubes into his fifth cup of coffee. 

"I would," Akaashi says, "shorter spikers aren’t an unheard phenomenon at Karasuno." Tenma’s math had been correct. He sits up straight in the booth and points his plastic stirrer in Akaashi’s direction. 

"Akaashi-san," he says, all seriously, "please, I need to know. Who’s your friend in Miyagi?"

"He’s no longer in Miyagi," Akaashi says slowly, "He was younger than you, but did you know Hinata Shoyo?"

Tenma lurches up, bits of his coffee splattering across the table. 

"Know him!" Tenma throws his arms up, spurred on by the coffee, "of course I know him! I made him!"

The shopkeeper has to kick them out at closing. Tenma steps out into the chilly night slightly dizzy, laughing into the autumn as he pivots in his non-orthopedic sneakers. How had this not come up when he’d googled this guy after his interview? How hadn’t he, Tenma, an expert detective, put together any clues? Akaashi, a geriatric technophobe, must have had a service purge all information about himself from the internet.  

"Look, Akaashi-san, thank you," Tenma tells him, "you even made me forget about Zom’bish."

"Thank you, Udai-san," Akaashi hums. "I think we may have found what we were meant to write." 

A few weeks later, Akaashi extends an invitation. V-league season opener in Sendai with the added perk of being able to interview one of the professional players that Akaashi had gone to high school with for the upcoming Shonen Vie Olympics addition. Tenma asks if he can interview Hinata instead, but, as if prepared for this question, Akaashi explains that the magazine is looking for an existing member of the national team. 

"Then what about that Karasuno setter?" Tenma counters. 

"Are you not familiar with that Muscle Milk advertisement?" Akaashi asks, which is answer enough, so Tenma concurs and accepts the ticket. Besides, he knows Bokuto Kotaro from the national team broadcasts, and has always liked his energy. 

He calls his sister that evening to let her know he’ll be in town in a couple of weeks. 

"Do me a favor," she says, "bring me back that magazine you stole from me, like, almost a year ago."

Time sure flies.

"I didn’t steal it."

"Whatever. Just return it." Izumi says. So he digs the magazine out from his desk drawer and shoves it in a folder cover-side-down so he won’t risk making eye contact with the Ultimate Battle Ghost. Yeah, it should probably still be burned, but it’s not like it’ll be doing any harm at Izumi’s place, where nobody will ever bother to reread it. 

The morning of the opener, a cold November Saturday that freezes Tenma’s fingers and toes together, he meets Akaashi at the station. Akaashi is wearing casual clothing, and Tenma is struck with the feeling that he’s seeing his teacher at the grocery store. They board the train, and Tenma, for the first time in what seems like a lifetime, willingly, almost excitedly, returns to Miyagi. 

-End-

Tenma knows enough about volleyball to see the game for what it is. 

Growing up, nobody in his family had been sports people, and they hadn’t expected Tenma to be either. He’d been content to run amok with The Neighborhood Kids, the gaggle of children who’d surrounded him since he was small. Most of them lived in Tenma’s neighborhood beside the bay, and had parents who, like Tenma’s mother, had spent their whole lives in Arata. Tenma had known many of them since infancy. 

It was Nakata who had gotten him into sports, into volleyball. Nakata had never been one of The Neighborhood Kids. For all intents and purposes, Nakata should never have even been his friend. He was tall and handsome whereas Tenma was small and scrappy. He was effortlessly sociable whereas Tenma was notoriously a clown. Tenma didn’t exactly like being a clown, but making people laugh felt like the only thing he was good at, so he performed. In turn, he spent his early elementary school years perpetually in trouble with teachers and administration. For the crude doodles on his homework, for flicking bits of crumpled paper to land on his neighbors’ desks. For reciting made-up stories instead of his English translations, for doing handstands and cartwheels during gym class, for cannonballing into the pool instead of demonstrating his breast stroke.

Nakata, on the other hand, had a name alone that inspired awe. It was an old name, synonymous with Arata and its history. The two characters could be seen carved into shrines, on headstones surrounding the temple, on plaques and trophies at the high school. It littered newspaper clippings, the small, touristy history museum, the city records. All of the old Arata families were related to the Nakatas in some way, although the ties were, at some times, guesswork. The mayor was Nakata adjacent— a great uncle or a brother-in-law. There was a network of broad-shouldered Nakata cousins who had jobs at the docks, at the packing plant, at the hatchery, at the police station, who all bore names their Nakata mothers or grandmothers had taken upon marriage.

Nakata was untouchable. The closest thing they had to a local deity. He was someone who, for as little sense and as little shame as Tenma had, he knew to leave alone. Tenma had never expected or wanted to be his friend. 

Iemoto had changed that like Iemoto changed everything.

Iemoto had been the quiet new kid who sat at the back of the classroom, who the other boys thought girlish and aloof. Tenma knew him only vaguely. Had seen him doing his family’s grocery shopping in the neighborhood convenience store. Had seen him with a small white dog near the downtown apartments, leash in hand, waiting for it to pee. Had seen him walking his little sister to and from Kindergarten. 

In an attempt to deter Tenma’s classroom antics, his teacher had sat him in the back beside some quiet girls and behind Iemoto. The move had indeed made Tenma less of a distraction to his classmates, but he was still antsy, restless, swung his feet underneath his desk, stared out the window, tapped his pencil against his notebook. When bored with all that, he would lean forward and whisper Iemoto-san, how many strokes does this kanji have, again? Iemoto-san, what are you getting for question three? Iemoto-san, don’t you think sensei’s hair looks like a crows nest? Iemoto didn’t laugh at him, never commented on Tenma’s tapping fingers or busy doodling, but he didn’t ignore him either. Instead, he would turn around, and he would answer the question. Setting the tone for the remainder of their relationship, the ebb and flow of questions and answers. 

Tenma slowly began to blow off The Neighborhood Kids in favor of hanging out with Iemoto at lunch, at recess, after school. He liked how Iemoto made even the dumbest things sound interesting: the social habits of ants, the formation of various cloud types, the migration patterns of songbirds. That, and Iemoto was never waiting for Tenma to dazzle or entertain, was never waiting for Tenma to prove himself the punchline he’d been all his life. 

In no longer being content to play court jester, Tenma’s classmates were no longer keen to keep him around. He was fine, though, being a little outcast with Iemoto. It made him feel almost cooler, like a superhero. He liked that he’d stuck to his ideals, and now, he had a friend it felt like he could tell anything to. 

During the early days of their exile, Iemoto had worked his quiet magic on Nakata too. It had seemingly happened outside of school, as Nakata wasn’t in their class.

It had been the beginning of June, but had felt like mid August. Tenma had been standing outside his house, tossing a tennis ball against the siding and listening to his mother and Izumi scream at each other in the kitchen. He’d heard Iemoto call out his name, he’d turned. And there was tall, tanned Nakata standing a few paces behind Iemoto, looking somehow shy. 

"What’s he doing here?" Tenma had asked, almost accusatorially. Forgetting his manners around Arata royalty. 

Nakata had introduced himself as if he needed introduction.  

Still, years later, it had confused Tenma. How Nakata could have had any friends in the world, and yet, chose them. He chose them shamelessly and repeatedly. Outside of them, he was so good at being a Nakata. So prudent in his studies, a fast learner on the boat, a baseball slugger like his father, diligent in performing his temple duties with his older sisters. It was as if choosing them was his singular and most treasured form of rebellion. The one thing in the world he’d selected for himself.

Soon enough, the three of them were inseparable. And in the summer sun-soaked days he spent with them, Nakata introduced him to sports as a way of living as opposed to a thing to dip in and out of. Nakata’s family lived baseball. His sisters played softball at Izumi’s middle school, and his father had played in the minors before either an injury, mediocrity, or something else had sent him back to Arata, back to his father’s fishing boat. Their house— once a forbidden almost-sacred place— was revealed to be more a shrine to the Sendai Lions than to the Nakata family legacy. 

"You should join the team, Udai," Nakata had said to him, "you’d be good."

"Every kid should have a sport," Nakata’s father had agreed. "It builds character." Nakata’s father’s word was equivalent to the word of a god, so Tenma had followed Nakata to practice. But he found standing in the outfield excruciatingly boring. He did like stealing bases, which he was very good at, but it hadn’t outweighed the utter dullness of waiting for all the other boys to take their turn at bat. Soccer wasn’t an option because the team was made up of The Neighborhood Kids, who really didn’t like Tenma anymore now that he was hanging out with Nakata. 

"What about volleyball?" Nakata had suggested one afternoon. The three of them had been lazing in the Nakata living room, shirts stripped, oscillator fan humming, staring at the television, watching something now long forgotten, but most likely, a baseball game. 

"Volleyball?"

"Yeah," Nakata had said, “My cousin makes me play, they run a league out of the athletic center.” He’d lamely demonstrated a spike with the hand not holding a dripping popsicle. 

"Don’t you have to be tall?"

"Nah. And they have a short person position where you do all the defense."

"But Udai wouldn’t want that," Iemoto had commented from where he was standing in front of the fan, hogging the breeze, "he’d want to score all the points."

It had felt extremely nice to be known like that. By someone who’d only been in his life for a few months. Whatever doubts he’d had about losing The Neighborhood Kids were squashed then and there. 

"Maybe I’ll try it anyway," Tenma had said, extending his leg in an attempt to prod Iemoto’s ankle, move him away from the fan. He’d asked his parents, who had procured the necessary paperwork. He’d attended a practice, the team made up of a grab-bag of boys from towns dotting the Miyagi coast. He’d fallen for it hard and immediately. 

It had given him and Nakata something in common besides Iemoto. Something to talk about when he wasn’t around, and something to do without him. In the lazy evenings, they’d pass the ball back and forth, wander through the sleepy Arata streets, chat between the thump of the ball as it made contact with their forearms. But as the years turned over themselves, as Tenma improved, as he begun to make waves in the Miyagi middle school volleyball scene, Nakata’s volleyball only winded down. By the time Tenma opted for Karasuno High School over the one in Arata, Nakata had given up volleyball, and baseball, completely. Tenma had once thought that he’d just lost interest, but in hindsight, maybe it had been a logical decision. Maybe he’d seen his father’s dreams come up short, and had decided not to gamble. He’d take over the fishing vessel like he’d always known he would— just as all of the men of his family before him had— back, and back and back. He’d string out bait traps and listen to the Sendai Lions on the radio as the boat rocked in the docile bay waves. He’d never try at something big only to wind up disappointed.

It had felt like a gift regardless. Something of Nakata that he’d given to Tenma, something that Tenma could never return. So now, sitting in the Sendai City Gymnasium beside his editor, Tenma is a once-been athlete who knows what he’s seeing. 

He knows that this match may as well be the finals. He knows that if Nakata’s father were still alive, and here for whatever reason, he’d be laughing at the court. He’d say we’re being spoiled here, boys. Championship tickets for the price of regular-season. 

Iemoto would then reference some arcane statistic, because facts stuck to Iemoto like leeches, burrs, gorilla-glue. Nakata would roll his eyes and go how the hell did you know that? And Iemoto would just shrug and go I just pay attention. 

Tenma looks out to the court— he doesn’t look at Akaashi beside him, even though Akaashi has been weird at the game. Or maybe he’s just being normal and Tenma’s not used to him being a human— who has hobbies and fills niches in other people’s lives— not just an editor who had spawned in the Shonen Vie building and sleeps in his swivel chair.

He doesn’t look at Akaashi’s old teammate on the Jackals who the fan adore as if he were a home-grown Sendai star. He doesn’t look at the home-grown Sendai stars on the Adlers, who he’d watched play on the Olympics broadcasts back when the Karasuno-grad setter had been freshly nineteen. Instead, true to his roots, he watches a somewhat familiar scene: Hinata on one side of the net, the short player from the Adlers— Hoshiumi, the announcers had reminded him— on the other. A clash of unlikely protagonists. He can’t help but think about the scrapped Warrior Dragon: Midair Collision. Two monsters rising to meet one another, a rematch years in the making. 

He’s seen these two play before— a fluke of sorts. He’d heard Karasuno had an Olympic caliber setter, that said Olympic caliber setter had lead his team to the quarter-finals, that those quarter-finals were in Tokyo during a time Tenma had free, so he’d made the trip. That was the good thing about living in Tokyo, he’d reminded himself on the train ride to the stadium. The most important things in the country were usually right at your fingertips. 

 Karasuno had lost the match, but Tenma barely remembers that part. He remembers greeting his old classmates for the first time since graduation, the reunion less awkward with volleyball to distract them from remembering or mentioning where Tenma had been from. He remembers Saeko and her drum team slamming away in the stands, and he remembers being as impressed as he’d been bitterly jealous of her, someone so entrenched in her community. And he remembers, of course, Hinata. Who had been better than Tenma had been at his age. In possession of the raw sort of talent that Nakata’s dad could always sense in baseball pitchers. And he remembers, after the match, staring down at the court in a melodramatic way and thinking that he may have created a monster. 

Now, it’s confirmed in stunning fashion. Although Tenma has since created a whole lot more monsters— undead wolves and undead bears, zombie knights, war dragons, demon cats, battle ghosts, evil scientists— Hinata blows them all out of the water. He’s got no edgy scars, no arrows stuck in his scales, no flaming ghost sword. He’s a different sort of monster— sunny and resilient, completely counterintuitive. On the court, he runs, he soars, he beams. 

"What do you think?" Akaashi asks at one point, taking his eyes off of his friend on the Jackals for probably the first time that game. Tenma shrugs. 

"I think I should be drinking whatever’s in the water in Brazil," he replies.

Hinata and the Jackals take the first set. The Adlers retaliate, snatch away the second. And with that deadly resilience, the Jackals tear through the next two sets to win the match. The crowd erupts in a familiar frenzy despite neither of these teams being based in Sendai. This crowd should really have been rooting for the Adlers, who boast two Sendai-area Olympians. But maybe they’re cheering for Hinata, Miyagi boy returned home. 

The post-match interview goes quickly, seeing as Bokuto of the Jackals talks about a mile a minute. He greets Tenma with a slap on the shoulder like they’re old buddies, sits down backwards in his chair and chatters away to him and Akaashi like a chipping sparrow. His over-eager speech pattern clashes magnificently with Akaashi’s evenness, and soon enough the interview has spiraled entirely off-script, which, for once, Tenma doesn’t mind. He simply sits and watches two people speaking their own language— a sort of push and pull, the tide ebbing and flowing, an innate understanding of one another. 

Tenma had had something like this, once. The ease of knowing someone for so long, so well, that their past feels like your past, their stories like your stories. 

"I was real sad to hear about Zom’bish," Bokuto tells him in response to a question that had had nothing to do with Zom’bish. "I really like the professor. Oh— and that zombie bear!"

"What if I told you my sister told me to get rid of the bear?" Tenma asks, and Bokuto makes a somewhat anguished face. 

"Who in their right mind would get rid of the bear?!

"Your contract prohibits you from sharing details regarding unreleased material, Udai-sensei,“ Akaashi says. Because of course he does. 

"Oh— good thing you don’t have that same rule, Akaashi!" Bokuto says, and Akaashi kicks him in the shin.

Tenma turns down their invitation for dinner and drinks afterwards, using the seven remaining Zom’bish chapters as an excuse to head out early. But instead of going to the train station like he'd planned, he walks, almost robotically, through Sendai until he gets to Izumi’s place.

The cat is already shut in her and Eri’s room, and a pot of coffee waits on the stove. Tenma kicks off his shoes, pours himself a mug, loads in the sugar cubes, and goes about hiding the Takahashi-kun Talks to Ghosts magazine while Izumi measures out her coffee. 

"Where’s Eri?" He asks her as he shoves the magazine inside a dusty coffee-table book featuring vintage cars. He’s never seen either Izumi nor Eri express the slightest interest in cars outside of complaining about their languishing Subaru, so, hopefully, they’ll never find it. "Is that whole, you not renewing the lease thing really about her dumping you?"

"She’s at the hospital," Izumi says, from where she’s mixing her coffee and half-n-half. Tenma slides the car book onto the bottom rung of their bookshelf.

"Oh no, the hospital? What happened?" 

"You’re ever the comedian." Izumi turns, joins him on the couch, her polkadot mug clasped between her hands. "What were you in town for, again?" 

"Volleyball game." Tenma says shortly. He takes a sip of the coffee. "My editor knows a guy in the pros, we interviewed him for a pre-Olympics addition."

"Is this your young editor?" Izumi asks. 

"Yeah," Tenma says. "The guy played volleyball too. I watched one of his games back when I was in university, and had no idea." 

Izumi smiles, setting her mug down on a hideous cat-themed coaster, the steam swirling. 

"Funny how things work out like that," she hums. "Clearly, you two were supposed to meet."

This is something that, no matter how hard he tries, Tenma will never understand about her. How she can have the naivety or the gall to think like that: about the world having a specific plan for each person. There are just too many implications within that line of thought. The implication that he was supposed to keep his family while so many others lost pieces of theirs. The implication that his childhood best friend was never supposed to grow old. That terrible things happen for the sake of other people’s self actualization, that the living are somehow more important than the dead. 

For Izumi, of all people, to think this way, is absurd. Someone who has so continuously been dealt the worst cards imaginable. As if she were intended to suffer while others never had to. 

"I don’t think anything is supposed to happen," he tells Izumi, "do you?"

"I think I was supposed to meet Eri," Izumi says, taking a careful, tentative sip of her coffee. "I think we needed each other, and that the universe helped us out because it owed us both big-time. Unfortunately, I’m a bit of a romantic."

Tenma makes a gagging noise, and Izumi rolls her eyes. 

"You’re twenty six years old." 

She’s got a point. 

"I think I’m going to try writing a volleyball manga next," he says. "That’s another reason I came. As, like, a research trip. And Akaashi can stay my editor— ‘cause he played too."

Izumi smiles, quiet approval. 

"I think that suits you," she says. "I like that more than the zombies." 

He picks at a fraying strand of one of his socks, takes another sip of coffee. He’d get up to add another sugar cube is Izumi wouldn’t admonish him for the habit. So, instead, he inhales, and exhales. 

"There’s something I need to do first," he says. And all at once, he is small again, he’s standing at her bedroom door, knocking nervously, math homework crumpled in his hand. He is asking her to again, explain, why he must flip the numerator when dividing a fraction. How to graph using point slope form. Remind him, again, of the formula to calculate the area of a rhombus. "Can you come with me tomorrow?" 

As he suspected, it's a question she's been waiting to hear. 

The sun is barely rising when the board the northbound bus. 

Why Izumi had insisted on going so unthinkably early, Tenma’s not exactly sure. Why a bus even runs to Arata at this time, he’s not sure either. But he’s too preoccupied to ask questions, so he follows her— from her apartment to the bus station to two seats in the back. By the time they reach their stop, they are the last ones left. Just Tenma, Izumi, and the bus driver, who calls out Arata, Arata, in a bored, passionless voice. As if he doesn’t know that the existence of this bus stop is a goddamn miracle.

"Are you ready?" Izumi asks, and Tenma stands. He’s not ready. But he’s here. He nods. He steps off the bus.

"Are you ready, Takahashi-kun?" The Ultimate Battle Ghost asks, as he floats at Takahashi’s shoulder, his ghostly breath drawing goosebumps down the length of Takahashi’s exposed neck, above the collar of his soccer uniform. Takahashi gulps and shoos him away, not taking his eyes off the carved oak doors of the Ghost Headquarters in front of him. Takahashi isn’t ready. He’s attempted this upcoming task once before: communicating with the newly-made ghosts at the Ghost Port of Entry. It had gone horribly. 

"Yes," he says to the Ultimate Battle Ghost, trying to make it sound true. "Of course I am. I’m the best ghost-talker there ever was! Today’s going to be easy peasy, Ultimate Battle Ghost-san." Takahashi adjusts his soccer bag on his shoulder. He has practice later in the afternoon, and it’s best to be prepared. He looks over at the Ultimate Battle Ghost beside him, his bulging eyeballs, his floor-length beard, in all his silvery glory.

But the Ultimate Battle Ghost doesn’t look so sure. His veiny eyes are out of focus, and his shape a little dimmer than normal. 

"Are you ready, Ultimate Battle Ghost-san?” Takahashi asks, concerned. Although, he doesn’t know why he’s concerned for a ghost who can’t be sick or tired, who can’t die, who doesn’t have emotions that matter in any real way.

"My boy," the Ultimate Battle Ghost says, "I’m never ready. Nobody ever is. But we’re here." 

"Can’t believe I’m actually here," Tenma mumbles. He doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but as he stands in the belly of the bus shelter, the sunrise hazy in the winter sky, his own voice startles him, puffs of air in the cold. The smell of sea air hits him in a dizzy wave— pure salt mixed with the wind, it tugs, a gag reflex. He turns to look behind him, although he’d seen it from the bus window, at the athletic complex. Atop a hill, with wide steps built into the slope, relatively unchanged after all this time. Even back when he'd run here, after everything had happened, he'd been shocked to find that building, on the outside, the same as ever.

Once, a banner had hung across the entranceway, home of the Arata Salmon. Tenma would be lying if he said that the name, and the pink uniforms he and his volleyball teammates were forced to wear, were not contributing factors in his decision to attend a far-away mountain-town high school. Crows were a lot cooler than salmon, black and orange more flattering than pink. 

But across from the athletic center, there had once loomed a wooded hill, abutted by a dinky parking lot and not much else. Now, rows of sturdy, permanent apartment buildings and new-build houses have risen from the ground.  

"You get used to it," Izumi hums, "but it’s so weird, still, how this area’s gotten so built up." It has. Tenma doesn’t need to ask why. This part of Arata— inland, somewhat hilly— was spared the worst.

"Mom and Dad’s place near here?" He asks. He knows they live somewhat close— his mother has described it before, we’re in the neighborhood near the athletic center now. But Tenma hadn’t even been able to comprehend that. The neighborhood near the athletic center had hardly been a neighborhood. It had been no more than six blocks, a few houses with neat gardens, a convenience store, a Kindergarten. It had been an enclave, separated from the actual town by sloping green hills. 

"Yeah— they’re right in town. We just need to stop over there for the car," Izumi says, gesturing with her head towards the apartment buildings. He follows her as the sun slowly ascends, as the frigid air becomes less so. Down an unfamiliar road split between a valley, though a neighborhood that had once been trees. They pass the Kindergarten— closed for the weekend— perched high-up on the hillside. They pass rows of beige houses with small hopeful gardens. 

"That was Iemoto-san’s place before he moved," Izumi says, almost absently, gesturing her chin to one of the sleepy houses. Thin, one story, a row of bare bushes out front. The last time Tenma had seen Iemoto’s father, he’d been living in one of the rundown, habitually vacant, inland apartment buildings. The roads had all still smelled of salt and decay. Tenma had stood at his front door, fingernails scraping at his bloodied cuticles, and managed to squeak out sorry. I’m so sorry. For everything. Iemoto’s father had readjusted his worn tradesman’s hands on his daughter’s shoulders and said son, no apologizing. Not now. Not for anything. Not to us. His daughter had just stood there, her father’s hands clamped on her shoulder, looking at Tenma like he was one of the dogs in Zombie Knight Zom’bish: a beloved companion turned rabid, savage, feral, grotesque. 

She must now be older than her brother had been when he’d died. A realization that does something to him, tumbles over in his throat. He stares at that front sliding glass door. The lights are off. He looks away, follows Izumi back to the main road, into a sleepy town waking. What had once been a spattering of shipping yards, van depots, a smelting plant or two, has now multiplied. Convenience stores have poked up between warehouses, a small cafe, blinds drawn. He follows Izumi around the back of a fish store still in slumber to a cluster of houses. She stops in front of one of them— L shaped, on the corner, a dusty car parked out front in the gravel. 

"Is this us?" He asks. Feeling stupid that he even has to. 

"Yeah," Izumi says. "I told them I’d be taking the car— but they’ll still be asleep. I just gotta get the keys." Maybe that’s why she’d insisted on coming so early. He stands there, feet glued to the pavement, as she slips inside. He adjusts his scarf against his nose, looks around at the houses. If he hadn’t known what had happened here, he would never have guessed. It’s any neighborhood: narrow, well-paved road, oatmeal colored houses with windows placed by indecisive architects. Skinny pines and young maples grow up along fence lines. But Tenma does know what had happened here, so he shifts uncomfortably in his boots, and tries to make this obvious resilience make him happy or hopeful instead of irreparably angry. 

Izumi emerges, swinging the car keys on her finger. 

"Okay," she says. "Let’s go." 

"Let’s go, boy," the Ultimate Battle ghost says, and Takahashi nods. He steps forward, and presses his hands against the door, shoving it open. The community theater has always been rumored to be haunted, but only Takahashi and a few others know the truth. That this place is a lighthouse of sorts, that when a person dies suddenly and violently, thus creating a ghost, their spirit feels the tug of this place and is pulled here, lulled here, in frantic confusion. 

But nobody would ever know that, and Takahashi wouldn’t know it if he weren’t endowed this strange gift. He steps inside, scanning the rows of vacant upholstered seats, the expanse of wooden stage, long, velvet curtains hanging limp. Takahashi breathes in, out. It won’t be so bad, he reminds himself, maybe there won’t even be any ghosts here today! Sometimes, there aren’t. Some days, the world is good and peaceful. Some days, terrible things happen outside the radius of this place, and Takahashi doesn’t have to think about them, doesn’t have to feel them.

He inhales, he exhales, and he looks over towards the Ultimate Battle Ghost. But the Ultimate Battle Ghost is nowhere to be seen. Not even in the flicker of the lights or the shifting cool coils of the air. The curtains, the overhead chandelier, the papers stacked in the corner, everything is still. No trace of the Ultimate Battle Ghost’s silvery beard, his sword, his deep voice. Takahashi is alone— utterly alone. Alone in a place he’d so desperately wanted to avoid, yet he knew lay so permanently in his future. As if it were part of a course charted for him by a cruel, deliberate navigator.

"Ultimate Battle Ghost-san?" He calls, to the emptiness, "where are you? Where’d you go?" 

"Where are you taking me?" Tenma asks as Izumi navigates the vehicle slowly eastward. She opens her mouth, but her response is lost behind the hiss of the car heating system, and Tenma decides that the answer, whatever it is, is unimportant. They retrace their steps through the hills, through the town. A few vendors open shop as they pass, blinds rolling up, lights flicking on. As Izumi turns back onto the main road, Tenma rolls down his window, letting the icy wind inside to clash with the stuttering heat. They slowly descend towards sea-level, the car turns onto a small, winding road that cuts across the hillside, and Tenma looks out the window at somewhat-obstructed view of the bay through the pines and slanted tile rooftops. The ocean spreads out before him, that familiar vastness, surrounded by a crescent of sloped mountains, dotted with high-up houses. Fishing boats sway idly in the water below.

"Nakata-san still lives right there," Izumi says, gesturing again with her head, but Tenma doesn’t turn to look. He knows that house. It had been damaged, but not destroyed like the Udai family’s had been. Not reduced to driftwood, pulled out to sea, pieces strewn about like scattered toys. If he looks back, he thinks that maybe he’d see that Nakata’s mother has replaced the roof, replanted bushes and perennial flowers not-yet in bloom. But he doesn’t look back, and so it remains the place it had been the last time he’d visited. Water damaged, full of people and toppling-over emotions, a small, curly dog mockingly alive while so many people dead.

He could ask Izumi to stop here. He could return to their parents’ house; he could shower their modern kitchen with compliments while raiding the refrigerator; he could stand on the little upstairs balcony and ask how the roof does in the snow. But Tenma knows why he’s here, and what has to be done, and Izumi wordlessly presses the gas pedal, steers the car through the snaking road. 

Tenma’s window rolls up, and he glances over at Izumi, who is wordlessly fiddling with the switch on her door, eyes still ahead. 

"We can turn back," she says, as his window shuts, as if she can feel his eyes on her. Tenma shakes his head. 

"Nah," he says, but closes his eyes regardless, bracing for impact. “I'm already here.” 

"Ultimate Battle Ghost-san? I’m right here! Can’t you hear me?" Takahashi cries out, although he knows, somewhere in his bones, that this is all in vain. That whatever powers are at work here, they’ve taken his ever-present sidekick from him. He wills his brain to flip the switch, wills his Ultimate-Battle training to kick in: to be able to feel the power of this place, to hear the others, to communicate with those who aren’t reaching out directly, like his Ultimate-Battle Ghost companion always does. He closes his eyes, as if bracing for impact, whispers to himself. “Come on, Takahashi,” he whispers, “you can do this. You’ve trained for this. You’ve got to be ready now.”

The ghost-cold scatters goosebumps across his neck and his knees, through the fabric of his soccer jersey. Takahashi’s fingernails bite into his palms, and he wills himself, again, again. He brings forth all that he has of his power, and the switch flips. And his chest, his heart, his brain his blood vessels, everything collapses in on itself as he hears that screaming. The tumble-down rollercoaster avalanche free-fall of dreadful, searing screams. 

Tenma opens his eyes and sees the ocean unobstructed. For the land sprawls out flat in front of him, miles of arid, empty fields, an open, oozing sore. A few stubborn ruins poke up in the distance, a handful of diggers and dump trucks laze about, grazing at the winter grass. But the emptiness of it remains: a scissor taken to a magazine, removing the glossy photos of models, cars, African land mammals, leaving only the background: bare and obvious. 

Once, Tenma had known this place blind. Had known the distinct sway of the fishermen’s voices, each a different bird call. Known the smell of the fish, the brine, the oysters. He’d known the toll of the bell on the Nakata family vessel, the low swoop of Nakata’s fathers voice, stop daydreaming, son, and help us unload here. The sound of the waves on the belly of the docks, could tell the weather by the sound, by the smell, no eyes needed. His bare feet had known the texture of the brine-coated wood, of the pavement, of the loose gravel, as well as his fingertips now know the feeling of ink and paper-cuts. He’d known those roads like he’d known the freckles on his breastbone, one with the alleyways and the side streets. Been on a first name basis with the shop-keepers, the salesmen, the feral cats that came sniffing for sardines. He’d been from and of somewhere, that place had been him and he’d been that place. And he’d taken it all for granted. 

Now, he and Izumi drive, their parents’ car a moon buggy charting unfamiliar terrain, documenting the undocumented, the uninhabited. They swerve, and Tenma exhales, feeling cliche and stupid as his lungs hitch, as if they’ve inhaled sand. 

The last time he’d been here, it hadn’t been so empty. The land had looked like a hoarder’s attic: piles of debris, roving paramedics and government vans, jagged skeletons of buildings among overturned earth. Foreign helicopters and reporters had flocked like waiting carrion birds, aid groups in brightly colored vests like a swarm of monarch butterflies flown south. But now, time and tenure have erased the ruins, and grass has grown where the land once bled. 

"They’ve got a memorial built up on that hill," Izumi says, interrupting the sputter of the heat and the soft rumble of the tires, breaking the silence between them. "And in the summer, when everything’s green, it’s actually real pretty." Tenma looks past the sea walls, to where a platform juts atop a man-made hilltop. 

Maybe on another day he’d ask her to park, and they could ascend together. They could stand and survey what's left of the the place they grew up, and where so many of those they'd grown up with had died. They could trace their fingers over the memorial plaque, feeling the carved indentation of their classmates’ and friends’ and neighbors’ names, Yasutake, Ueda, Horie, Nakata, Iemoto. But the wind hits the windows, and the winter curdles everything starchy brown, and Tenma stares out at this moonscape from the grimy car window. 

"Let’s go in the spring, then," he says. Hopes it sounds like a shaky promise and not yet another attempt at running. 

Izumi nods. Maybe she’s just giving him air, or, maybe, this place churns up the same silt that it churns up in Tenma. She steers the car through the roads they’d once lived on, back, back, but not the way they came. The car points towards the ocean, drives alongside the fortified sea walls. And like the shore-town child he’d been, he is, he’ll maybe always be, Tenma stares out, lulled by it, the waves rock alongside his bone marrow. 

Izumi pulls the car into a small parking lot, surrounded by grass, a public restroom, a lame children’s jungle gym, the sea spanning out beside it all. 

"What’s up?" Tenma asks her. "Got a flat?" 

"We’ve got an errand to run," she says, a sort of forced casualness in her voice. "C'mon, let's get out." 

"Get out!" Takahashi screams, as the voices lash against his chest, his heart, his eardrums, his very being. "What’s going on? Ultimate-Battle-Ghost-san, please help me! Who are all of you? What happened?" 

"Takahashi-kun," a voice says, cutting through the wailing and the wasting. An intercom of sorts, slicing neat without shouting. "It’s a busy day— the busiest I’ve seen in a long, long time." 

"Who are you? Takahashi yells, into the empty-full echo of the jam-packed vacant theater, "how do you know me?"

"I know everything about you," the voice says, soft despite the screaming, peaceful despite the turmoil. "I know that you tie your shoes with two loops. I know that you favor your left leg, and I know you chipped your tooth on a staircase as a child. I know that you prefer cats to dogs, and that you hide your precious treasures underneath that loose floorboard in your closet. I know that you’re afraid of these powers, and I know you will do wonderful things one day. But I won’t spoil the surprise."

"How— who— what’s going on?" Takahashi yells, and, all at once, he’s on the stage. Unaware that his legs had acted independently of brain. He stands, as if an actor, and before him, a small ghost hovers. Other than the Ultimate Battle Ghost and his warrior-rivals, no ghosts have ever showed themselves to Takahashi— he talks to them, but doesn’t often see them. Ghosts are shy things, the Ultimate Battle Ghost had explained. Hurt, confused, and untrusting, so self-conscious of their new form. All of the ones Takahashi has seen have sported clothing and haircuts dating them back centuries. 

But in front of him, this ghost’s face comes to fruition. A boy’s face, no older than Takahashi, with round cheeks and pale eyes, a whisper of a birthmark cutting across one eyebrow. He wears the translucent remnants of a school uniform, not dissimilar to Takahashi’s. His limbs unspool at the ends. 

"They need you, Takahashi-kun," the boy-ghost says, in his soft-loud voice, a radical contradiction. "Call to them— they’re lost, and they’re afraid, and they need you to guide them home."

"But… but you can’t stop this?! What’s going on!" Takahashi yells, yells, above the screaming that still thrashes, the voices of these thousands of invisible ghosts swarming around him, "is there nothing we can do to save them?"

"No." The ghost-boy says, solemnly. "Talk to them, Takahashi-kun. I know everything, and I know that you can."

"Come on, Tenma," Izumi says, as Tenma attempts to get his feet to move from the parking lot. "It's been years. We all know that you can." 

Tenma moves his boot from the pavement, and follows Izumi. They cut past the empty playground, following the water to where the road lolls along with the curvature of the bay. To his left, the scraping of boats against cement, and Tenma steals a glimpse of the handful of fishermen hauling their skiffs to concrete shore. To his right, a packing plant rises. A new place sprouted from the ruins of the old. Tenma follows Izumi down the road, a car passes slowly by, bumper slightly detached, and Tenma squints ahead to a cluster of people huddled around a long tent of sorts. A flock of gulls bobs up and down above, calling to one another, clicking and squawking as they dive, as they sail back up, beaks empty. 

"We’re picking up lunch," Izumi says. Apparently, the entirety of Arata Town had had the same idea. Up ahead, a throng of men and women bend against the chilly ocean breeze, coats bundled towards them. The smell of fish and salt is ever-clear as Tenma and Izumi approach. A small pack of children in puffy coats weave around the side of the tent which, now, Tenma can see, is less a tent and more of the bones of a building, an easily-disassembled thing akin to a concert venue, spanning the block. Underneath, fish lay out on ice, in coolers, a cat flits around a woman’s legs, pawing at a container, someone kicks it away. 

This is something he's done countless times before. Sent to the fish market in the mornings, told what to get, carry it home, Iemoto walking beside him, telling him all the various ways he could prepare it, the habitat the fish had hailed from, it’s diet, it’s mating rituals, it’s scientific classification. Nakata, hands in his pockets, whistling a song from the radio. 

"Your pick," Izumi says, handing him a wad of bills before folding her arms across her chest, pulling her scarf towards her. "I’ll wait here. It’s loud in there." It’s useless to fight, or to argue. So Tenma nods, and bows his head as he turns and steps into the crowd. He wraps his scarf around the bottom of his face, to protect from the cold, he tells himself, although it’s a lie. Maybe his long hair is enough. Maybe time is enough. He hasn’t been here in so, so, long. Surely, this place has forgotten him. But as he stares down at his feet, skirting through the throng, glancing from fish to fish, he thinks that, maybe, he’s not afraid of being recognized, but afraid that he’ll look up and recognize nothing and nobody. That this place will be as foreign and unfamiliar as Tokyo had once been. That nobody from home will remember him, and this place will be entirely new. 

He makes brief eye contact with the woman selling his fish-of-choice— her old, wrinkled face unfamiliar, yet familiar. The smell of it all, however nauseating, somehow a salty comfort, as the fish stares up at him with a single glassy, marble eye. 

"You from around here?" The woman asks him as she packages up the fish, "I haven’t see you before." 

"Yeah," Tenma says. "Grew up here." Tenma has never been seasick. He’d been born breathing in the salt sea air, he’d learned to row before he’d learned to read. Now, though, he feels as if he’s rocking in a boat, belly unsettled, ready to hurl. 

The woman just nods, and hands him the container with the fish. He pays, weaves his way back to where he can see the pom-pom of Izumi's hat. He dodges between shoulders, thick wool coats, thin arctic puffers, two small girls chasing a calico, their yells melding with the gulls that still swarm. 

"I’m not holding this," he says to Izumi, ignoring the woman she’s talking to, shoving the container into her arms "it smells."

"Oh, Izumi-chan, you didn’t mention you had anyone with you," the woman beside her says, and something cold drops in Tenma’s chest, something other than the windchill, the smell of fish. The cold of fear and shock— he knows that voice. Knows it as well as he’d once known this place, knows it as well as he knows the hopeful cries of the gulls and the impatient lap of the water against the shore. 

He looks up, and his eyes meet hers, and he sees the shock that he knows must be mirrored. Nakata’s mother drops her handbag into the gravel. Face, usually rosy, as white as a ghost. 

The ghosts continue to wail, to scream, to babble and cry and plead, and Takahashi feels blood underneath his fingernails, blood in his bones, something strangling his lungs and his intestines and all of the veins and aortas that make up his human, human body. The voices all cavalcade, plead with him, where are we? What’s happening? Where do we go? What do we do? Where is my mother? Where is my husband? Has anybody seen my daughter? Has anybody seen my son? 

Takahashi bites back tears, his gift now a curse, he squeezes his eyes shut, the screams seeping into his bloodstream, vowing, threatening, promising, to stay with him throughout his next life, his life after that. A haunting that the young little ghost knows will never leave him. Despite it all, though, he chokes through his strangled sobs, and he finds his voice long-buried. 

"Come this way!" He cries, "I know you’re afraid, and you don’t know what’s going on, but we’re going to help you. We’re going to make sure you’re safe, and that you can get to where you need to go. Just follow my voice! Just follow my voice!" He opens his eyes: and there they are. Piles of them, layering over one another like pieces of translucent cloth, layered so deep they make a fog, a haze, hands and fingers and toes and eyes and hair all reaching out in a jumbled tangle of intangible, unintelligible bodies. 

Who is that? Can we trust them? Have you seen my dog, he’s got a blue collar! My little girl, I brought her to daycare, it’s just up the hill from the hatchery, she wears a little bead bracelet, has she come this way? Who are you? Where are we? Where’s my grandfather? Have you spoken to my niece? 

Takahashi reaches out, he reaches, he grabs through the haze and the fog, wills his lungs to take in more air. He calls out to the ghost boy, who he can feel, somehow, feet away. 

"There’s really nothing we can do?!" He cries out, "they haven’t passed on yet, surely, at least one can be saved. We can guide them back! We can—"

"There’s nothing we can do," the ghost boy’s fragile voice says. "Takahashi-kun, they won’t listen to me yet. To them, I am still a monster. They need a human. They need you.”

Takahashi blinks, his eyes foggy with tears, with sweat, with the turmoil of ghosts turning around over him, deaf to his calls. If he could have chosen his powers, if he had the sort of talents that characters in anime or manga have, here, he would transform. He would grow large ears, crow wings, boar tusks, fish gills: he would sweep all the ghosts all up in his arms or carry them in his pelican beak, he would fly, swim, pull them back to their homes, their bodies, they would stutter out a breath, they would climb to their feet. 

He would be able to do more than just stand, and watch, and listen. 

But Takahashi has no transformation sequence. No armor, no tusks, no gills. And through the tangled, jumbled screaming, the firestorm of voices, he hears, again, the little ghost boy: clear and cutting, a singing- a singing- someone is singing, singing, singing- and he knows what to do. As if the instructions were within him all along. 

"I’m right here! I’m who you’re looking for!" He sings, in his faulty, pitchy singing voice, to the tumble of ghosts, "I’m your niece and your nephew, your uncle, your aunt. Your mother your father, your friend, your little dog. I am whoever you need me to be, right now. I’m right here! It’s me!"

"Uh… yeah, it’s me. Hello, Nakata-san, Tenma says, as she scrambles for her handbag and meets his eyes again. The same dark, beady eyes as her son, her face slightly wrinkled from time and tragedy. 

"You… you haven’t been home in a long time." She says.

I don’t have a home, anymore, Tenma might think, or say. But the gulls cry overhead, the waves lick the shore, boats clunk into one another, and the winter curls around him in that familiar way it only does along the coast: amplified, angrier, more insistent. So he doesn’t say that. 

"Well," he says, scratching an exposed bit of neck with his gloved hand, "Nee-san finally wore me down."

"We’ve missed you." She says. And Tenma, who has built his fragile little career on not just pictures, but words, hears the pronoun, and it licks at him, a dog welcoming him home. The we not a specific, but a place, a people, the roads and the buildings and the sleepy, waiting ocean, the Arata wind and the ice-cold still that lives with people here. The texture of time and grief and hope ground together, mortar and pestle. 

"Thanks," he manages to mumble out, "but it’s just a little visit. I’m going back to Tokyo tonight."

"Yes— a city boy," Nakata’s mother says, "you always were, weren’t you. Your mother says you’re a working artist now."

Tenma shifts uncomfortably in his boots. It all feels so pointless, here. His stupid little discontinued manga, his tiny apartment in a far-away city where only a handful of people matter. His silly little pipe dream spitting in the face of everyone who stayed here, who worked to build it back. 

"Yeah. I guess I am." He says. "I had a serialized manga. It got cancelled, though."

None of that seems to have any meaning to her, but she smiles regardless. 

"So you made it. We always knew you would."

The we again. Tenma finds himself looking past her, as if someone is going to walk up behind her, she catches him staring, and shakes her head. 

"He's not here anymore, dear," she says softly. "He comes to visit, though. He knows how lonely I get."

Tenma looks away, feeling his sister shift beside him— no doubt she knows it too, what Nakata-san means. Knows what Nakata-san had lost while Izumi had been climbing up through a stairwell to a roof that was supposed to be high enough, supposed to be safe, before climbing into the belly of a rescue helicopter, soaked and shivering. 

Knows what everyone here had lost while Tenma had been in Tokyo, playing artist. 

"How’s he doing?" Tenma asks, daring to ask, and Nakata’s mother exhales, Tenma can’t look her in the eyes. 

"He’s well. Recently engaged. Although, I don’t think either of them are too keen on a traditional wedding."

Tenma should have known this. In another lifetime, he would have. He and Iemoto would have sung the girl’s name with sing-song vowels, would have laid on their bellies watching Nakata pick at the lint on his sleeves before leaving to meet her. Maybe Nakata would have tugged the ring box from his coat pocket, turning it over in his hands, would have gone, now you two, shut up for a second— Tenma, literally, if you laugh, you’re headed straight back to Tokyo, I swear. I just want advice. And Iemoto might have gone, well, I mean, it’s been obvious that you were planning this. And Nakata would have made a face and gone, I only decided last week, freak. Don’t go thinking you know my business better than me. 

"I think he’d love to hear from you," Nakata’s mother says, tenderly.

"I don’t know if that would be a good idea," Tenma replies. Remembers the last time he saw Nakata, how his dark eyes had clouded, how he'd spat, his voice still full of the pneumonia that had cruelly saved his life, just get the fuck out of my house, Udai. The Udai stinging. 

"Time, Ten-kun," Nakata’s mother says, "it works wonders,” She pauses, her gloved hands fiddling with the strap on her pocketbook. "I know he regrets it, those things he said to you. Grief— it makes monsters of us all." 

Tenma swallows. The irony not lost— after all, he’s a writer of sorts. 

"He’ll be home for the New Year," Nakata's mother continues. "Your family is more than welcome to join us. Iemoto-chan and her father may come as well."

Tenma glances at Izumi beside him, but she’s looking at her phone. Tenma turns back to Nakata’s mother, a monster he must face alone. 

"I’ll seriously consider it," he says. "If it’s alright with everyone else. Thank you, Nakata-san."

She smiles, bids farewell to him and Izumi, and turns away. Tenma watches as she pulls the hood of her coat around her head, wisps of graying hair flittering out from underneath. He doesn’t breath as he watches her fade into the chilly distance, but feels his hand reach out, as if to stop her, as if to ask her all of the questions he’d ever wanted answered. 

The voices of the ghosts begin to stop competing with one another, as, slowly, one by one, they direct their attention towards Takahashi. They reach out to him, their thin, silvery hands, misty fingers, tangled limbs.

 “Come with me,” he sings, his crotchety singing voice somehow sufficient. The ghosts ask no more questions, and the screaming slowly becomes a fog of sobs, of a bewildered sort of acceptance, of horrible understanding. Takahashi sings, and he sings, and the ghosts begin to converge. They move towards him, and then away, up, up, to the rafters. And as Takahashi looks up, he finds the sun, of all things, hovering there. A different sort of sun than the one outside. This one, he can look at without being blinded. And the ghosts are calling to him, and calling to the others, and more and more flood the theater, pulled from far away, sliding in through the cracks beneath the threshold, the gaps in the window sealant. They swarm, and some begin to sing, sing above the sobs and the screams as they follow one another towards their destination. 

And Takahashi, soon realizes, that the sobbing he hears is not just theirs, but his own. His throat is raspy from the singing, his lungs weak from the tears. 

"There’s too many of them!" He chokes out, between his singing, "Ultimate Battle Ghost-san, or, or you, little ghost! Please, help me! I can’t do this all alone!"

"Help me with the door, Tenma," Izumi says, and Tenma swings open the car door, letting her set the fish on the seat, a promise that the car will stink forever. The cold nips at Tenma’s ears, he pulls his scarf tight around his face, and he walks, as if pulled by a magnet, to the edge of the parking lot, through the patchy grass, across a narrow path his mother most likely uses for her bike rides, to the railing that separates them from the sea. Bait traps are already strung out, long ropes that could be seaweed. As the sun takes its place overhead, casting rays down on the shimmery water, on the mountains that curl around the bay, the peaks and valleys and dotting of buildings and barges it’s all so hypocritically pretty. Tenma leans his arms against the railing and stares out at it all, and Izumi, wordlessly, joins him. 

"Are you alright?" Izumi asks him, as Tenma continues to stare at the distant mountains, at the watery blue horizon. He could say a lot of things, but he’s not sure, exactly, what will come out of his mouth, and if it’s going to be sad or stupid or a mix of the both.

"How can anybody stay here?" he asks. "How can anyone stand it?"

He can’t ask that. He wasn’t here for it. He had been in Tokyo. 

"I think," Izumi says slowly, "that for some people, it helps to leave, for a new beginning. But for others… everybody here understands. And it’s hard to go live with people who don’t."

"People like me." 

"Tenma," Izumi exhales, "You’re from here too."

From here doesn’t count for anything, though. For back on that day, Tenma, nineteen years old, had huddled underneath a drafting table. After the six endless minutes were up, after they filed out in snaking lines to stand in an adjacent soccer field, their pen numbs, their spilled ink, their papers all abandoned. He'd stood near the goalie box awaiting the aftershocks, watching the skyscrapers sway, a sort of waking dread coiled in his belly like a cobra. The feeling that something was very, very, very wrong. The quake had gone on for too long. Had grown in intensity as opposed to puttered out. 

On the soccer field, information had trickled: from someone's hand radio, a laptop, the occasional smartphone. Afterwards, it had poured. 

Meanwhile, Izumi had been climbing down flights of hotel stairs: Tenma still wonders if she'd heard it all, the metal on metal and glass on glass and pavement on pavement, footsteps in stairwells and sirens on sirens. He's never asked. 

Meanwhile, Eri had been holding one side of a wheelchair, making eye contact with the doctor hoisting the wheels, trafficking in impossible decisions.

Meanwhile, his parents were pulling people off the road into their car, three cats in the trunk, a dog on his father’s lap, a mother and a daughter and three elderly fishermen in their back seat, driving towards the mountains, anywhere, anywhere, away and away from the ocean and away from where their house would soon be eaten by the sea. 

And Tenma had stood on that soccer field in Tokyo. He'd gone back to his dorm, he'd sat in that lobby with power and food and a hole in his lungs and he had watched. He had watched. That newscaster's soul-split expression as she read from the teleprompter. He’d dialed through phone numbers, the dial tone searing itself into his memory so much so he can barely stomach it even now: nobody in Arata was answering, but nobody was answering period. He'd even tried Izumi in Canada, the first time he'd attempted to contact her nearly a year. He’d clung to the cellphone as others had whispered, don’t you have family up that way, Udai? 

"Doesn't feel like I am, anymore," Tenma says. "From here, I mean." He drums his gloved hand against the railing, and Izumi doesn’t respond. Maybe she didn't hear him. Maybe she just doesn’t know how to. Maybe they are too unlike each other now— a wicked irony. That while Tenma got to keep his family unlike so many others, he will never understand them like he used to. And they will never understand him. 

He thinks, in that moment, that he knows how he’s going to end Zombie Knight Zom’bish. And he knows that Akaashi isn’t going to like it. 

"I know," Izumi says, simply. "I know." Maybe that’s really all there is to say. He glances over at her, her fingers tapping on the railing. "Tenma. You remember when I told you about not renewing my lease this year, right?"

"Nee-san, you might have been able to get me back here, but I’m not moving to Sendai," Tenma says, only half-joking. But Izumi has a sort of somber, serious look on her face now. 

"We’re not renewing it because we’re leaving." She says. 

"Well isn’t that, like, the point?"

"I mean we’re leaving Sendai."

Maybe because of the layer cake of emotions the day has been, this new information just settles. Like a blanket laid atop a bed, wrinkles smoothed out. Tenma turns away from her quickly— he looks at the ocean. He looks at the boats. He looks at the stubborn remains of his hometown. 

"You’re… you’re not moving here, are you?" He asks, neutralizing his expression and turning back to face her. 

"Oh, no. No." Izumi says. "I could never. Don’t you remember how much I hated it here?" 

"Vaguely," Tenma says. But in truth, he hadn’t thought about it all that much. He’d probably been too distracted with his own life back then to bother thinking about hers. But she’d been a lonely child who, like Tenma, had run away at the first opportunity. Enrolled in a far-away university, corresponded infrequently, barely visited. Never sent any photos because she hadn’t wanted them to know that her Canadian friends had assisted her in dip-dying her hair. She’d run, and she’d run, just as Tenma had, until one tragedy had forced her hand and pulled her back, and another had forced her into staying. 

"Well, I did." Izumi says. "Being like me in a place like this? Forget about it. And I’d never do that to Eri." She exhales. “We're still getting everything settled with immigration, but it's done.” 

“Wait- Canada?” 

He doesn’t really need to ask, and Izumi doesn’t really need to answer. She nods anyway, a hand moving to her ear. 

"Why?" He blurts out. Why now, after all this time? 

“I was supposed to be here a month, Tenma,” Izumi exhales. “Nobody was even supposed to know I was here. You wouldn’t’ve known I was here if not for everything.” She looks away from him, out at the ocean, twisting her gloves together. “I’ve been putting it off. First for Mom and Dad, and then for Eri, but… it’s time for us to go.” She smiles weakly, eyes squinting as she looks out at the fuzzy horizon, sun slowly rising. "Mom and dad have been alright for a while now," she continues "they don’t need me anymore. This place is figuring itself out." She shrugs, squinting out at the lazy sunrise. "We never belonged here, little brother.”

Tenma might ask about the pronoun: that we. If it was only her and Eri, or if it was he, too, who was always meant to leave. Who had never belonged here. 

“I didn’t realize Eri even spoke English,” He says instead. 

“She studied abroad,” Izumi says. “And she's been keeping up with it. Still, though, it's been a long process, and the language test was a bitch." She sighs, her breath moving in the frigid air, against the blue of the sea. "But really," she continues, "I think you’ve been a good influence on us in this respect. I really think we’re all going to be okay." 

It’s a very brave thing for her to think. Tenma leans his forearms against the railing, stares down at the water. Oh. Of course. One does not simply move to Canada with a live-in partner, this must have taken years. No wonder she’s been needling him so much about this: it was a condition of her departure. To make sure that there’s someone else, someone who can come to their parents’ aid if necessary. Someone capable of giving a home address, locating the grocery store and the pharmacy. Someone to do what he had once done: to drop everything, to run north. It has always been about this. She’d needed this assurance. 

"You going to learn how to ski?" He asks, and he feels the smile slip over his face as he turns to her, folds his arms across his chest. “There’s skiing out there, right? Bet Eri will have a goldmine out there, compound fracture a week on the slopes I bet. Especially those kids who don’t know how to ski for shit.”

"Now that’s just sadistic," Izumi says, but Tenma can hear the laughter in her voice.

It might be the first time, in what feels like a lifetime, that he’s heard her laugh here. No longer an angry, ostracized teenager. No longer freshly traumatized. Now, he thinks, this might be the first time they’ve been here together as versions of themselves they’re half-way okay with. The first time they've been here as equals. 

"Are you going to call Nakata?" Izumi asks. and Tenma shrugs. 

"I don't know if I’m ready."

"But will you ever really be?" Izumi asks, more of a statement than a question. A solemn, sitting truth. 

"I wasn’t ready for this!" Takahashi sobs, "it’s all too much! What happened to them?"

"I’m so sorry, Takahashi-kun," a voice— the Ultimate Battle Ghost’s voice— calls out from somewhere, "I never would have thought— and so early on in your training—  but you’re doing the best you can, boy. Focus, and you will get through this." And his voice fades into the background of the wailing, the swirling, screaming mass, as the ghosts continue to pour in. 

And the little ghost appears at Takahashi’s side. 

"I was like you, once," the little ghost boy says, "I had your same job. And oh, it’s the hardest one there is. But it needs doing."

"But I’m not doing anything!" Takahashi yells, as the ghosts begin to scream again, pleading, wailing, "they’re dying, and there’s nothing I can do!"

"I know." The ghost boy says. "I know. We are going to be here for some time. Let’s do it together." 

Takahashi inhales, he exhales, and he resumes his song. And, with the little that he can do with his limbs, he reaches out and takes what must be the ghost boy’s hand. 

"This… this is how you want to end it?" 

Akaashi looks at him from across the table, hands laced together, eyebrows scrunched behind his smudged glasses. Tenma nods and leans back in his seat. Normally, he would listen to Akaashi’s sage wisdom. But Zom’bish is cancelled, he has seven episodes left, and this is how he’s ending things. 

"Yes," he says, the confidence and sincerity in his voice surprising him a bit. Not two emotions he’d ever linked all that closely with Zom’bish. "Yes."

"Udai-sensei," Akaashi says slowly, thin hands clasped on top of the stack of storyboards as he stares at Tenma with that familiar intensity, “Zom'bish’s goal, from the start, was to become a human again. Do you not think that him failing to accomplish this convolutes the whole story?"

Some other day, Tenma would agree, and let Akaashi do what he wants. He would trust in Akaashi’s fancy education and general well-regarded reputation and let him chart this boat. But as the Tokyo sunshine filters in through the tall Shonen Vie windows, he thinks, for a moment, that Akaashi doesn’t get it. And that this ending isn’t for people like Akaashi, who seek resolution tied up neatly in gift wrap and fancy, patterned tape. Who see the world as a narrative and themselves as a character, trudging towards a pre-determined future. 

Things don’t usually end like that. Tenma should know. 

"Of course Zombish wants to be human again," he says, considering the words carefully before he speaks, "but things can’t just go back to the way they were before." 

"They won’t have, though," Akaashi says, as if he still thinks Tenma can be swayed. "Zom’bish has created a better world. He’s defeated the scientists. He’s dismantled their organization from ever returning." 

"Yeah I know," Tenma says, "but that’s the point, Akaashi-san. If he goes back to being human after, with the world like it was before, it’ll be like none of it ever happened." He adjusts the lanyard around his neck, the material scratching, and looks at Akaashi’s muddled, confused expression. Maybe Tenma’s just never stood up for Zom’bish like this before. Maybe, he thinks, this is what the story had been missing. "It’s a different world now, Akaashi-san," Tenma continues, trying to summon the confidence he’d so liked in his voice earlier, "he’s just going to have to learn to live in it. Besides, becoming a human again isn't just about, well... becoming a literal human again. He's getting back all those things humans have, emotions and wants and stuff." He looks, again, to Akaashi, trying to gauge a reaction. Reactions, these days, are harder to judge from him. But Akaashi is just staring down at the stack of sketches, as if lost in thought. Slowly, he looks upwards. Meeting Tenma’s eyes. 

"Why not give him a choice, then?" He asks. "To stay as he is, or change back. It could be a noble act for Zom’bish— there could be a trade off. He could choose to remain as he is in order to save someone else. Perhaps, save the Professor."

"Nope," Tenma says, shaking his head. "He can’t have the choice, because he’d choose to change back." He stands up, and takes the stack of papers from underneath Akaashi’s clasped hands. "Trust me on this one, Akaashi-san. This is how it ends."