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A lot can change in ten years.
Akutagawa, of course, was no stranger to that fact—he’d changed a little, to put it lightly, since he was a child. He was stronger. More resilient. Powerful in ways he couldn’t fathom in his youth. Still, he couldn’t help but feel taken aback as he gazed over the dark field.
Ten years ago, this field was an empty lot full of knotted weeds that choked windswept trash. Broken glass was interspersed with gravel over the cracking, packed dirt, and it was so dry that in the early mornings, when Akutagawa leaned out the tent flap, the dust coated his throat before anything else.
Like any other abandoned lot on the outskirts of Yokohama, this place had been abundant with society’s outcasts: the homeless, the addicts, the gangs. It wasn’t much of a home, but ten years ago, it was at least a place for Akutagawa, Gin, and his friends (his found family, really) to return to. A familiar place to stay and survive while they could.
Nowadays, Akutagawa still had Gin, but the rest of his family was long gone. And now that he was with the Port Mafia, there was no reason for him to return. But on his hardest days, the days where his illness seized his body or where the dying expressions of those around him were a bit too familiar, Akutagawa could sometimes feel something invisible pulling at the hollowness inside his chest.
Come visit, it said.
And so he would.
But this wasn’t the empty lot that raised him.
Where shriveled brambles once stood, there were now lush green swathes of grass swaying in the midnight breeze. Where short rows of battered tents once stood, there were now garden boxes full of vegetables and herbs. And where the dirt used to crack into spiderwebs of dust and glass, there was now a shallow retention pond—perhaps seven meters across, rippling as waterstriders darted across the surface.
Akutagawa clenched his jaw as he stared into the pond. His shadowy reflection felt so out-of-place: silhouette warped, features erased. The sliver of a crescent moon hung over his head, and it once used to be the only thing that lit up this empty lot.
Not anymore.
All around him, fireflies floated through the air, moving slowly as if through water. They dipped and pirouetted above the grasses. And their tiny golden lights flickered like candles, creating tiny pockets of light lasting no more than half-a-second before disappearing once more.
He’d seen fireflies before, but not like this—they were like a sky full of golden stars, stars that breathed and flew and danced. Stars that were alive, stars that sang to each other in chords of light.
It was so beautiful that Akutagawa felt sick. He watched them flit around, landing where tiny flowers replaced trash, reflected where water replaced dead earth.
Beside the retention pond, a small sign caught Akutagawa’s eye.
Welcome to the Yokohama Community Garden, it read. And beneath it, in smaller print: Made possible by the Armed Detective Agency.
Akutagawa clicked his tongue. Of course. Who else? He could just imagine that foolish little farmer boy knelt in the garden boxes, planting tomatoes and okra. The weretiger was surely involved, too. Akutagawa huffed as he imagined him on his knees, pulling weeds and digging down to the roots with his stupid tiger claws.
The Agency couldn’t leave well enough alone, could they? They just had to invade every facet of his life, down to the trashed lot he’d made a home of in his memories.
One firefly lit up by Akutagawa’s nose. Without thinking too much of it, he lifted a finger to meet it in midair. It landed on his knuckle and went dark.
“Hello,” Akutagawa muttered softly. It wiggled its antennae in response, and crawled around to his palm. He lifted his hand until he cupped the tiny creature.
A few years ago, Akutagawa might have thoughtlessly crushed it in his hand and wiped it along the bloody fabric of his coat. Not because he wanted it dead, but because it was simply the natural order of things: Akutagawa, the apex predator, and an annoying little bug unlucky enough to get too close.
Now, though, he was gentle. Akutagawa watched the firefly brush its antennae against his skin. It almost tickled as it crawled in the lines of his palm. Of course he wouldn’t kill it; he had a promise to keep, and there was no point in crushing it, anyways.
The firefly lit up, casting a dim glow in his hand. Amber light peeked through the cracks of his fingers. Something caught in Akutagawa’s throat as an unnecessary thought drifted somewhere in the back of his mind.
I recognize that glow.
He recognized it in the lavender-gold shades of the weretiger’s eyes. A tiny beacon to the creatures around him—I’m here, I’m here. Lights blinked all around Akutagawa like matches lit by the flame of another: a quiet light that called upon others to join him.
Truly, it was an idiotically intrusive thought.
Akutagawa opened his palm and watched as the firefly’s wings fluttered open, the breeze carrying it up into the sky, where it joined the constellation of the others.
A lot can change in ten years, he thought.
And maybe change wasn’t so bad after all.