Work Text:
It is, Kanzaki thinks, splayed out on the living room couch, almost too quiet.
At the same time, he feels like he can hear anything: the low hum of the fridge from the kitchen; an electrical buzz coming from what might be the television set; the sound of his own breath. Upstairs, his mother is humming, a soft tune from one of her dramas. Someone is mowing the lawn a couple of houses down. A cat brawls somewhere on their street, yowling viciously.
In the past, when he was home, he’d had to fill every second of his attention with something else. A worn copy of Slam Dunk, with the OSTs on repeat in a set of noise-cancelling headphones, was as close to calm as he could get—he just had to change positions when one or other phantom would phase right through the book to peer at him. He can’t remember the last time he was at home and doing nothing at all.
It’s nice. Really nice. Kanzaki turns his face into one of their throw pillows, closing his eyes. He could sleep here.
His ringtone suddenly goes off, and he startles off the couch, still not used to calls when his phone had, admittedly, been dry for most of his childhood. He fumbles it out of his pocket and checks the screen, where an incoming call from club prez flashes insistently.
Mogari, who should be at the hospital by now. Maybe it’s worse than they thought? The peacefulness that had flooded his body just seconds ago makes a flying leap out the nearest window, and Kanzaki’s hands shake as he swipes to accept the call.
“Hello?” Kanzaki says.
“—wanna cry for youuu!”
Kanzaki squints. “Mogari? Hello?”
On the other end of the receiver, Mogari keeps mumble-singing against an odd background hum, clearly out of lyrics. Kanzaki is a hundred percent certain that he’s singing one of the Slam Dunk openings; he’s listened to it so many times that he could probably recite every line in his sleep, and not even Mogari’s lackluster performance could turn it unrecognizable.
“Mogari?” he tries again, in a break between verses.
Mogari yelps, apparently finally realizing that someone’s listening. “What the hell? Who is that!?”
“You called me,” Kanzaki says, louder. “Hello? Is something wrong?”
“'Zaki? Oh, shoot. Sorry, 'Zaki, that was an accident! How’s the noise over there?” Mogari asks. “Wait, don’t say anything, I can barely hear. Lemme turn off the water.” The background hum disappears. “Okay, go ‘head.”
“Are you in the shower?” Kanzaki demands. “I thought you were going to the hospital!”
“I wanted to sleep in my own bed,” Mogari says, after a beat. “Don’t tell Korekishi, he’ll kill me. I said I was gonna call a cab, but I just hoofed it home. It’s not bad, I swear. I’m fine.”
“Fine!?” Kanzaki feels his voice getting higher. “Mogari, I stabbed you!”
“You grazed me,” Mogari corrects. “Nothing I haven’t felt before. You missed all the juicy veins, so don’t worry.”
“Did you clean the wound before you showered?” Kanzaki tries to remember as much of his basic first-aid training as he can. He’d sat through the video lessons with his sister, before she moved out, because the phantoms would always lie low if Kanzaki was with someone else. Safe to say, he wasn’t really paying attention to the videos. “Is it wrapped? Or something?”
“I just hopped in. I guess every time I tried to wash the blood down the drain, more came out. Maybe I should have wrapped it...”
“Send me your address,” Kanzaki says, stumbling over his own feet in his effort to get to the door. He backtracks, covering the receiver to shout up the stairs: “I’m heading out, Mom!”
“Where are you going?” His mother appears at the top of the stairway, her hair in a towel. “This late?”
“Helping a friend with something,” he calls over his shoulder, lacing his sneakers. “It’s Friday night, so it’s fine! It’s important!”
Before the door closes fully, his mother reaches through the crack and squeezes Kanzaki’s arm. “Be safe,” she says sternly, but she’s smiling. A little teary-eyed. (Kanzaki feels like a total loser.)
“I will,” he says, leaning into her anyway. Into his phone, as he jumps down the stairs, he says, “Mogari! Your address! Hello!?”
“I’m here, I’m here. I’m just trying to get dressed, but I can’t really lift my arm, and I don’t wanna ruin my shirt. Yo, ‘Zaki, you don’t have to come, for real. I’m good! You’re not that strong, hah—ow.” His hiss comes out as a rush of static. “Okay, I think I’m gonna sleep naked. Seriously. Don’t come!”
“Make sure you’re decent.”
“Wha—?”
Kanzaki hangs up on him. He flicks through his contacts to find club genius’s number, pausing in the light of a streetlamp.
Korekishi picks up on the second ring. “Kanzaki, hi! Did the exorcism help?”
“Yes,” Kanzaki says, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s—really great.”
“I’m glad. It must have been really hard for you.”
“It was, uh, something. Hey, do you have Mogari’s address?”
“Mogari? Isn’t he at the hospital?”
I hate you, Mogari, Kanzaki thinks. “I wanna leave him a get-well-soon gift. ‘Cause it was my fault, and stuff.”
“Don’t say that,” Korekishi says immediately, his tone sharp. “You know that’s not true. But—er, let me look. I think he sent it to me at some point… oh, here! I’ll forward it to you.”
Kanzaki’s phone pings with the incoming message. As he scans the preview, he straightens—it’s within biking distance, and if he hustles, he can get there in under half an hour. “Thanks, Korekishi! I’ll see you at school!” He ends the call before Korekishi can use his supernatural perception to figure out that Mogari and/or Kanzaki had lied about the hospital, doubling back to wheel his bike out of the garage.
He pops in his earbuds and flies, swerving around the occasional phantom in the street, enjoying the rush of cool night air against his face and arms. One of his tires is slightly deflated, and he hasn’t been on two wheels in ages, so he’s vaguely wobbly, but he tilts his head up to the moon and laughs. The family house is safe. The air is sweet. His playlist throws peak song after peak song at him. If this were a manga, he would lose control of the bike at the upcoming intersection, right as a tipsy truck driver checked his phone, and get thrown into midair, before waking up in a hospital bed… his mother and sister would probably be there… and now, Tamon and Korekishi and Mogari, too… Mogari, who might be bleeding out…
Kanzaki lowers the volume and carefully checks both ways before crossing the road, picking up the pace on the other side.
He hesitates outside of the door, his bike left lying on the ground downstairs. It seems impossible for Mogari, who’s always so spirited, to live in such a nondescript place. Kanzaki checks the address twice more, just to be sure, before knocking.
When the door next to Mogari’s slams open first, Kanzaki stumbles backward, a scream stuck in his throat.
“Oh, it’s you,” Mogari’s strange white-haired cousin (or cousin-once-removed, or whatever) says, relaxing. Kanzaki is pretty sure that he tucks away a long blade into the folds of his clothing. “Kanzaki Kaoru, right?”
“Ye–es,” Kanzaki manages, trying to slow his heartbeat. “How do you know my name?”
“Of course I know your name,” Cousin-Mogari says, clearly enamored by a firefly flickering near Kanzaki’s elbow. “Yours, and everyone in the—Phantom Busters, was it?—and those in the student council, and the teachers. I’m working on your classmates. What are you doing here?”
Thankfully, Real-Mogari opens his door and sticks his head out, saving Kanzaki the trouble of wracking his brain for an appropriately safe response. He flashes a toothy smile at Kanzaki—Kanzaki really hopes that he’s wearing pants, because he’s got nothing on top—before turning to Cousin-Mogari. “Ren, stop interrogating my friends! It’s creepy and weird!”
“Are you bleeding?” Cousin-Mogari, Ren, says, snapping to attention. Mogari retreats farther back into his own place, dodging Ren as he darts in front of Kanzaki to try and get a look.
“No,” Mogari says unconvincingly, his voice distant. “Quit blocking the door!”
“You’re lying,” Ren says. Kanzaki imagines that he looks furious, because Mogari actually giggles. “I can smell it. And you—” he turns to Kanzaki, exactly as upset as he’d thought, ghostly in the moonlight and narrowing his eyes, “—you smell guilty.”
“Seriously, enough!” Mogari grabs Ren’s shoulder from behind, whirling him back around. “‘Zaki didn’t do this, he’s helping me sort it out. He just feels guilty ‘cause I asked him to lie to one of our buddies for me, and he’s an honest guy. Go back to your apartment. I’m not stupid.”
Ren looks from Mogari to Kanzaki, who puts on his most neutral face and nods. Even so, Ren’s hand twitches toward a spot near his waist, exactly where he’d stashed his weapon. Kanzaki inches as far away from him as he can, pressing against the cold balcony railing.
“Ren,” Mogari repeats, and this time, it’s different. Firmer. Kanzaki can’t see past Ren’s silhouette, but Ren frowns, backing off. Behind him, Mogari glowers, barely visible in the dimness of his apartment.
“If you insist,” Ren says to him, sullen. “But I don’t believe you. I suppose it’s true that you don’t have bloodlust, though.” He directs the last part to Kanzaki, offering a slight nod. “I apologize.”
“It’s fine,” Kanzaki says quickly, putting his hands up. “It, er, happens to the best of us.”
“Okay, shoo,” Mogari says, reaching out an arm to wave his cousin away, back to his still-ajar door. When Ren does, reluctantly, Mogari grabs the hem of Kanzaki’s t-shirt and hustles him inside, nearly maneuvering him straight into the wall. Even injured, Kanzaki thinks, he’s really freaking strong. “Come on, move those legs! I don’t think he’s going to change his mind, but if he does, I don’t think I could stop him again. Maybe if I got Noir-sensei to help…”
“Noir-sensei?” Kanzaki echoes, as Mogari shuts the door.
“Yep. He moved in, can you believe it? This building’s filled with weirdos,” Mogari says, flicking on the main lights. (He’s wearing pajama bottoms, Kanzaki notices.) “Why would anyone rent to him? He looks like he came straight outta an American cowboy movie. A bad one.”
“I think it’s kinda cool.” Kanzaki slips off his sneakers, looking for somewhere to store them. From how it appears, Mogari has just the one pair that he wears to school, which he keeps wherever they end up when he takes them off, apparently. “He looks a little like Ace, from One Piece.”
“I know One Piece,” Mogari says. “I like Luffy! And the super strong green-haired guy! And the little reindeer. Want tea? I can make some.”
“Nah, I’m good. Super strong green-haired guy?” Kanzaki says, following Mogari into a tiny living room. “His name is—holy shit, you’re still bleeding?” He hops aside to avoid stepping directly into the dark drops of blood that trickle from Mogari’s arm, cradled to his chest. “You bled everywhere!” Kanzaki gapes at the stains on the floor, and on the couch that Mogari sinks into, and all over the kitchen counter, visible from where he stands.
“Did I?” Mogari cranes his neck to peer around. “Oh, I did. I should’ve turned the light on when I got back. Oh, fuck.” He scrambles away from the couch, pressing his good hand into the wound, holding the whole arm out over an empty patch of floor like it’s contagious. Mogari looks plaintively over his shoulder at Kanzaki. If blood wasn’t actively pulsing lazily between Mogari’s fingers, the sight would almost be funny.
Blood is, as a matter of fact, still coming out, though, and Mogari looks strangely pale now that the lights are on. “Where’s your bathroom?” Kanzaki demands, walking Mogari over to the door that he’s directed to. He sits Mogari down on the toilet seat, checking the medicine cabinet behind the mirror for first-aid and coming up empty-handed. “Are you serious?”
Mogari has the decency to look sheepish. “It hasn’t been that long since I moved.”
“I need to Google this,” Kanzaki mutters, jabbing at his phone. “Okay, use this towel—” he snags one off a top shelf, praying it’s clean, “—and press hard. And lift your arm up.” Mogari winces as he does as he’s told. “Uh, maybe a little lower, if that’s more comfortable. Okay. Okay. Hold it. I’m going to grab some stuff. Do not move from this toilet.”
Kanzaki trips over Mogari’s shoes as he stuffs his feet back into his own sneakers, taking the stairs down two at a time. He’s never been more grateful for the abundance of convenience stores in every neighborhood, ducking into the 7-11 on the corner of Mogari’s street and speedwalking to the aisle he needs. The cashier, a tired-looking high schooler, gives Kanzaki a concerned onceover as he scans the three rolls of bandages, antibiotic ointment, bargain-sized antiseptic solution, gauze pads, and bottle of pain relievers on the counter.
“Are you okay?” he asks. “3,243 yen.”
“I’m fine,” Kanzaki answers, tapping his card.
“You’ve got blood on your shirt.”
“It’s not mine,” he says, looking down. The cashier’s eyebrows disappear behind his cap. “It’s—a fall. My friend fell.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Have a good night,” the cashier says, holding out the bag. Kanzaki thanks him and runs out of the store, which probably doesn’t help his case much, but he doesn’t trust Mogari to listen, not when he can return home with a massive gash in his arm and decide the best course of action is to go about his nightly routine as usual.
Accordingly, he’s pleasantly surprised to find Mogari still on the toilet, albeit now slouched over with his arm propped on the sink. “Just have to keep the injury above the heart, right?” he asks, perking up to wiggle his fingers at Kanzaki, who dumps everything he’d bought onto the lip of the sink. “Woah, you got a lot of stuff! That’s a huge bottle of pills! Painkillers? It doesn’t hurt, though.”
“I don’t wanna hear it,” Kanzaki says, shaking two out onto a paper towel he’d grabbed from the kitchen. “You’re bruising everywhere, and the only way those’ll heal is if you move regularly. Here, you need water?”
Mogari shakes his head, swallowing them whole. Kanzaki supposes that compared to phantoms, two tablets of acetaminophen are nothing, gently peeling the towel away from Mogari’s skin. The flow has staunched significantly, to Kanzaki’s considerable relief, and he’s comfortable enough to start cleaning up the gash. With a damp towel, he first dabs away all the blood that had crusted around the wound, then passes it to Mogari so that he can wipe down the rest of his body. With some of the gauze and antiseptic, he starts carefully swabbing the edges, glancing at Mogari every couple of seconds, but the club president gives zero reaction. At one point, he reaches down to scratch his leg with his injured arm, and Kanzaki has to shout at him to stop moving.
“Were you being serious?” Kanzaki asks, once he’s soaked through two gauze pads and is preparing a third. Mogari is mid-yawn. “Does it really… not hurt?”
“Yeah. Stuff like this only hurts if whoever did it was actually trying to kill me,” Mogari says cheerfully. “‘Sides, you’re taking care of me! Man, I feel great.”
“Be quiet,” Kanzaki mumbles, keeping his movements as steady as possible. “I feel like I’m gonna pass out.”
“What!? Why? You’re not good with blood?”
“Don’t move, idiot. No, blood’s fine. I just can’t stand the smell of this stuff.” He swirls the bottle of antiseptic with his free hand. “Reminds me of hospitals, and I hate hospitals.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. So I could understand,” Kanzaki says. “You wanting to stay at home, I mean. Makes sense to me.”
“Why?”
“I had to go to get stitched up, after I tried carving my own eyes out.” Even now, all these years later, he can’t help the shiver that works its way down his spine as the memories flash back, one after the other. The cold floor underneath him. The red-splattered mirror. The phantoms that wouldn’t stop fucking coming, even as he was half-sobbing, half-heaving on the ground, his own blood trickling into his mouth and down his throat. Kanzaki removes his hands from Mogari for a second, to shake himself off. Drily, he adds, “I overestimated my own pain tolerance. At some point, I just passed out. And then it was the hospital for… I dunno. Felt like forever. They wanted me on involuntary psych hold, probably because the hospital was filled with phantoms, too, but I thought they were nightmares, so I kept screaming at nothing. My mom made sure that didn’t happen, though.”
This is a good angle, with Mogari sitting and Kanzaki standing over him. Recounting the story always pisses him off, but Mogari’s staring at the floor, so there’s none of the pitying look that Kanzaki has grown used to. Smearing a generous amount of ointment onto Mogari’s arm, he continues. “She took me out of school for the whole recovery. Took me to my grandparents’ place, and they’re both half-blind, so they barely noticed that I had a big-ass bandage around my face. Real sweet, both of them.”
“Sounds nice,” Mogari says, when Kanzaki starts to worry whether he’s passed out. “Being with them. Not what you did to your eyes.”
“Ha. Thanks.” Kanzaki tears a length of bandage, prodding Mogari into a better position. “Twist your arm a little? The other way. Okay, hold still. I looked at, like, two articles on how to do this. Sorry if it hurts. Hey—are you okay?” He crouches down, holding Mogari’s arm in place with one hand, even though Mogari’s not moving much at all, anymore. He tries to catch the other boy’s gaze through his mess of damp hair. “Mogari?”
“Fine,” Mogari says softly, ducking his head lower. “Nothing.”
“How many articles did I read?”
“Um… four?”
Kanzaki grimaces. “You need to tell me if it hurts. I mean it,” he says, deciding that, whatever it is, he can deal with it after Mogari’s bandaged up.
It’s easier than he thinks, applying the bandage. It helps that his patient is finally being still, but Kanzaki would be lying if he said it didn’t unnerve him, and Kanzaki finds himself casting worried looks at Mogari every few seconds. “Done,” he says, patting Mogari’s arm lightly. “Don’t move it around too much. Maybe I could make you a sling or something?” Kanzaki surveys Mogari’s bathroom, which is as sparse as the medicine cabinet. “Maybe I could find one at 7-11…”
“I’m good. Thanks,” Mogari says, rotating his shoulder. Kanzaki sighs, but Mogari finally meets his eyes and smiles, and he can’t really do anything but smile back. “I feel brand new.”
“Don’t lie, it’s bad for you. Okay, now, get out,” Kanzaki says, helping Mogari to his feet.
“Wha—” Kanzaki closes the door in his face, muffling the next words out of his mouth. “This is my bathroom, ‘Zaki! Hello!?”
Well. Some of his energy is back, Kanzaki thinks, relieved. He fishes out a trash bag from a box shoved into the corner and throws the used gauze in before considering the bloody towels he’d left in the sink. It’ll be hard to wash out, but he’s willing to bet that these are all the towels Mogari has, so he runs them under cold water and makes a note to himself to pick up hydrogen peroxide, later. Or compare it to the price of getting new towels. Isn’t Mogari rich? He vaguely remembers this as a plot point.
He hums as he rinses out Mogari’s tiny shower, watching the pink water swirl down the drain, then does another pass with some disinfectant wipes that are stashed behind the toilet, for some reason. He scrutinizes the floor and gets out the stains he finds, and, for good measure, the doorknobs and the toilet seat. Satisfied, he leaves the bathroom.
There’s only one door in the apartment, which is closed and which Kanzaki assumes is Mogari’s bedroom. Kanzaki scrubs the floors outside, too, and the countertops, before heading back to the 7-11, this time with one of Mogari’s zip-ups covering the blood on his front.
“Hey,” the cashier says, bagging Kanzaki’s hydrogen peroxide. The clock behind him reads half past midnight. “That stain remover’s really good, too, the one in the blue spray bottle. I use it for everything.” He gestures toward one of the aisles. Kanzaki throws in two, just in case, and thanks him again.
This time, when he returns to Mogari’s apartment, Mogari is sitting gingerly on the couch, as if afraid to move. “I thought you left,” he says, blinking at Kanzaki. He points at the floor. “Did you do all this? Wait. Is that my hoodie?”
“Was getting weird looks at the store,” Kanzaki says, shrugging it off. He tosses the new bag onto the couch, next to Mogari, who immediately starts rustling through it. “Look, peroxide. You ever used it before?”
Mogari shakes his head no.
“I’ll show you.”
Later, when all the fabric stains are taken care of and they’re both sprawled on the couch—Mogari upside down, with his head dangling over the edge and his socked feet hooked over the back, Kanzaki lying next to him—Mogari says, “How d’you know how to do… what you did today?”
“I told you, I looked it up. Why? Is it coming undone?” Kanzaki asks, his voice faint against the material of the couch.
“It’s not. But I didn’t mean just that. The peroxide, and the cleaning, and where to put everything in a way that makes sense.” Mogari’s eyes are closed, his hair flopping down to reveal his forehead. “Made me realize I’m useless when it comes to stuff like that.”
“But it’s not your fault.” Kanzaki pokes his side, amused when Mogari, clearly ticklish, cringes away. “Didn’t you live in the mountains with a super rich family? Living alone’s gotta be tough, coming from that.”
“They’re not that rich,” Mogari mutters, curling on his side to protect himself against further attack. He’s wearing a dark blue t-shirt, one that looks soft and worn, threadbare in patches. Not stereotypical old-money, but then again, Kanzaki wouldn’t know. Didn’t supremely rich people love dressing down?
“Anyway, I guess I just helped out a lot at home. At my grandparents’, and then in my own house, since staying still meant making myself an easier target for the phantoms.” Kanzaki shrugs. “It gets easy, after a while. ‘Sides, you’re probably gonna be out of commission for a while with your arm like that, so I don’t mind helping out. You live closer than I thought.”
Silence.
Kanzaki readies himself to poke Mogari again. “If you hate having me around, you could also just tell—”
“Ren was right,” Mogari cuts in, unexpectedly. “You do smell guilty.”
If it were a regular hour, Kanzaki might have waved him off. But it’s late, and Mogari has seen him much worse in the past, so Kanzaki tells him the truth: “No shit, I smell guilty. I hurt you.”
“It wasn’t you,” Mogari insists, suddenly flipping upright. The whole couch jostles with the movement. “It was that old goddess by your house. You couldn’t have done anything about it. And, to be honest, I’ve always healed pretty quickly.”
Mogari starts picking at the edges of his bandage, wriggling his fingers under until he can unravel a portion of it.
Kanzaki opens his mouth to protest, because who does Mogari think he is to undo all of his past hour’s hard work, but every word dies somewhere in his esophagus. Instead, he chokes, staring agape at the gash that had still been bleeding when Mogari first let Kanzaki into his apartment, which has now turned into a thin red line. A shade more serious than a paper cut, like Mogari really had only tripped and scraped his arm.
“It’s a Shishikuno thing,” Mogari says, by way of explanation, holding it up for Kanzaki’s examination.
“I—,” Kanzaki stammers. “I. Wow. You just let me keep going with my shitty first aid? When you knew this would happen?”
“I’ve never had a wound like this one close up so fast. For something this size, usually a week, at least. I never really tried to fix myself up while I was on the mountain. It felt kinda good to have something to remind me that I was still human.” Mogari looks away. “Also… I wanted to hear you talk. And you were being so sweet, with all the cleaning.”
Kanzaki flushes. “Shut up.”
“I mean it! And I really am sorry about the phantoms in your house. When you were telling me what happened, I just kept thinking about how easy it would’ve been to fix, if only I’d been here earlier.” A police car strobes by outside, its lights illuminating Mogari’s uncharacteristically serious profile. Kanzaki pulls up his legs to sit cross-legged, facing him. “But the stupid old man keeps everyone cooped up on the mountain, and we don’t know anything about what’s going on down here, unless it’s politics or something equally useless. What’s the point,” Mogari says, venomous, but when he looks at Kanzaki his eyes are wide and confused, “of being able to eat all those disgusting spirits if we can’t even help the people that need it?”
Mogari’s apartment is quiet, the police car now somewhere in the distance, Mogari apparently having tired himself out thinking. He lists to the side, his cheek pressed against the top of one of the couch cushions. Exhausted, Kanzaki copies his position, appreciating how Mogari never makes a lull in conversation uncomfortable.
“Now you smell guilty,” Kanzaki tells him, holding back a smile. “What’s up with that?”
“Stop talking like Ren. It freaks me out.”
“Listen,” Kanzaki says. “Even if you didn’t do that exorcism, even if I wasn’t the one who put a stick into your arm, I would still wanna come and show you how to use hydrogen peroxide to clean up blood, and how to fold trash bags neatly, and how to stop the sink from leaking. You guys helped me a lot. More than I could ever imagine.” He presses his knuckles against Mogari’s chest, right over the faded band logo. “You watched Slam Dunk just ‘cause I said I liked it. So, thanks. For being my friend, and stuff.”
Mogari exhales, puffing out his cheeks. “Okay, now go ‘head and tell me how you really feel.” He grins. “Kidding. I know you would. You’re a really nice guy, and sorry if this is selfish, but I’m happy that you can see phantoms, ‘cause otherwise I wouldn’t have met you. This is me also saying thanks, by the way. For being my friend… and stuff.”
He ducks to avoid the pillow that Kanzaki swings at him, rolling onto the ground and grabbing his own cushion as a shield. “I’m still hurt!” he cries. “‘Zaki!”
This is fun, Kanzaki thinks, bearing down on Mogari’s squirming form as he laughs. I’m happy I met you, too.
And then, out loud: “I’m happy I—” thump, goes the pillow against Mogari’s head, “—met you, too.”
(During Monday lunch, Tamon is unwrapping his sandwich when he suddenly drops it, leans over the desk, and grabs Mogari’s bare, unscathed arm. “Hold on. Didn’t you get stabbed here?”
“I had this really great doctor,” Mogari answers, winking at Kanzaki over Tamon’s shoulder. “Special treatment, and all that.”
Kanzaki rolls his eyes. Korekishi looks between the two of them and primly sets down his chopsticks. “Wait. Don’t tell me…”)