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I.
“Are we taking the stairs?”
“The elevator is a Devil.”
“I know. That wasn’t the question.”
The heavy stillness and dubious silence peculiar to places untouched for weeks had settled over the lobby of the eleven-story office building in Nerima. Behind the reception desk, the calendar still displayed the previous month. In the corner, a potted rubber tree had withered, its leaves shed onto the marble floor with no one left to sweep them. One of the overhead fluorescents flickered intermittently, casting a buzzing pulse into the vacant lobby.
Hayakawa Aki reviewed the file one last time. Eleven floors. Three missing persons over an eventful two weeks, preceded by three weeks of silence. All three had boarded the elevator to leave after work; none had reached the ground floor. Security footage recorded the doors closing. There was no record of them ever opening again.
He closed the file and adjusted the strap of his sword bag on his shoulder.
Angel had already settled into one of the waiting lounge chairs in the middle of the lobby. To call it settling in was a stretch, however. Rather than sitting, he looked as though someone had simply set him down there and left. His legs stretched forward, his head tilted back. The small white wings on his back pressed against the chair’s backrest, slightly crumpled. Unlike the flickering fluorescent above, the halo hovering over his head was steady and silent. His tie was loose, and one end of his shirt had untucked from his trousers. If he noticed, he clearly didn't care.
“You go on up” he said without opening his eyes. “I’ll keep watch here.”
“Watch what?”
“The door. In case it tries to run.”
“The Devil lives inside the elevator.”
“Then watching the door makes perfect sense.”
Aki looked at him. Angel didn't open his eyes. The fluorescent tube flickered twice.
They had been partners for four months. In those four months, Aki had learned three things about Angel. He didn't want to work. He sat wherever he could find a seat. And his voice never rose when explaining either of these facts. There was a fourth, but that was not mere observation; it was a rule, written in red ink on the first page of his file:
Do not touch Angel.
Aki walked to the elevator and pressed the call button.
Angel cracked one eye open.
“Are you using yourself as bait?”
“There is no other bait.”
“There’s me.”
“It won't want you. You’re not human.”
“Right.” His eye closed again. “What a nice coincidence.”
A mechanical groan echoed from above. The numbers over the doors lit up in sequence: 7, 6, 5, 4… As if pleased to be the only thing in the entire building still functioning, the elevator arrived with a maniacally cheerful chime. The doors slid open. The interior was mundane: a mirrored back wall, an old coffee stain on the gray carpet, and a small plaque beside the button panel reading Maximum 11 Persons.
Aki stepped inside.
“Hayakawa.”
“What?”
“If you die, Makima-san will be angry at me.”
“I won't die.”
“Everyone says that.”
The doors closed.
The floor indicators lit up one by one. 2. 3. 4.
Angel watched them. Makima-san had explicitly told him, “Keep an eye on Hayakawa.” Angel was keeping an eye on the numbers. Technically, it was the same thing.
At 8, the light went out, and for a moment none of them lit up. Then 3 and 10 illuminated simultaneously. Something an elevator should never do. From the depths of the shaft rose a long, spine-chilling shriek of metal grinding against metal. Then, a thud.
The overhead fluorescent flickered.
Angel raised his eyes to the ceiling without turning his head.
Another thud. The light flickered again.
On the third, the light went out completely, returning half a second later. In that half-second, the noise from above cut out entirely. On the fourth thud, the exact same thing happened. Angel pondered this relationship for a moment. When the light flickered, the building roared; when the light went out, it fell silent. He didn't know what the elevator was struggling with up there. But whatever was wrestling with it, he guessed it fed on electricity.
On the fifth thud, he was certain.
On the sixth, he stood up. It was his greatest physical effort of the day. Angel noted this to himself.
Behind the reception desk, a gray box was embedded in the wall. A yellowed label stuck to its door: MAIN SWITCH — UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL PROHIBITED. Angel looked at the label and wondered if he qualified as authorized. Deciding the answer didn't interest him, he pulled the lever down.
The building went dark.
The cab's ceiling had split open on the third plunge.
A hand reached through the gap. It resembled a human hand, but it was far too long, far too jointed. As if someone had chained four arms end-to-end and installed a hinge at every joint. It had no fingers. Where fingers should have been, there were buttons: round, emitting a yellow light, each marked with a black number. Pressing its own fingers, the hand dragged the cab to whichever floor it pleased. Pressing 3 made the cab drop; pressing 10 sent it shooting upward. Aki had slammed into the ceiling twice, the floor once, and the mirror once. Twelve fractured pieces of his own reflection were all that remained of the mirror.
His right eye showed him three seconds into the future, and Aki ducked three seconds in advance.
With his sword, he had severed the number 7 button. The button had fallen onto the carpet, blinked yellow for a moment, and died. The hand hadn't liked that.
Now the hand was rising again. One of its buttons curled slowly, deliberately toward another marked B. It intended to send the cab to the B level. To the lowest floor, the bottom of the shaft, where the previous three people had gone.
Then the lights went out.
The buttons turned dark. The hand froze in midair, a single centimeter from B. Like a statue. Like a forgotten sentence mid-thought.
The cab was pitch black. Aki’s right eye paid the darkness no mind. It showed him the next three seconds: the hand wasn't moving. It showed the three seconds after that: the hand still hadn't moved.
Aki raised his sword.
Descending to the bottom of the shaft by stepping out of the elevator and clinging to the wall's ledges took him ten minutes in the wavering beam of the flashlight he’d thrown into his pocket at the last second. The Devil's main body was tangled among the elevator cables. It was a long, pale thing covered in strands resembling human hair, and when it died, its blood smelled of hydraulic oil. Aki left the corpse behind. That was work for the cleanup crew.
At the bottom of the shaft, amid the oil and dust, he found three wristwatches.
One had a steel band, one was leather. The third was a plastic thing resembling a child's watch, with a smiling sun on its face. The first two had stopped. The plastic one was still ticking. In the darkness of the shaft, it ran obstinately on, as though no one had yet told it that its owner was gone.
Aki looked at them for a moment. Then he placed all three, one by one, into his inner jacket pocket. Their families would want them.
Climbing back up the wall and counting the floors, he pried open the ground-floor doors from the inside using the spine of his sword and stepped out into the lobby.
The only light in the darkened lobby was Angel's halo. Angel had returned to the waiting lounge chair and sat in the exact same position as before, as if he had never gotten up. His halo cast a round, pale circle onto the marble. Not like a streetlight, but like a nightlight someone had forgotten to turn off in a child's room.
Aki stood before him, covered from head to toe in black oil.
“Did you turn off the lights?”
“I turned them off.”
“How did you know?”
“Whenever the fluorescent flickered, something broke up there. I thought if I stopped the flickering, the breaking would stop too.”
“How long did you know that?”
Angel thought for a moment.
“Five minutes.”
“Five minutes.”
“I wanted to be sure.”
“I almost died twice in those five minutes.”
“But you didn't.” Angel tilted his head slightly. “So the timing was right.”
Aki opened his mouth to say something. He searched for the words, but couldn't find them, because every thought that came to mind sounded like something Denji would say. He closed his mouth.
“…Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Write it in the report. Make sure it reflects on my paycheck.”
Aki's left hand was bleeding. The cab's torn ceiling had sliced his palm open. Beneath the black oil lay a thin red line. Aki hadn't noticed. Angel had.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I know.”
He didn't know. But he knew now, so it wasn't quite a lie.
Angel pulled a folded white handkerchief from his inner jacket pocket and tossed it. The handkerchief landed not in Aki's hand, but on the empty chair beside Angel. Which was precisely where Angel had aimed.
Aki bent down, picked up the handkerchief, and wrapped it around his palm.
“Don't give it back,” Angel said. “It'll have your blood on it. That'd be weird.”
Aki didn't answer. He caught the end of the handkerchief between his teeth and tied a knot.
“Should we turn the power back on?” Angel asked.
“Leave it. The cleanup crew comes tomorrow.”
“Good.” Angel stood up slowly, as if he had been preparing for the movement for two full minutes. “I didn't want to get up anyway.”
II.
The rain had started by the time they stepped outside.
It was one of those night rains typical of Tokyo. Soundless, persistent, appearing like silver threads beneath the streetlights. It possessed a special talent for creeping down the back of one's collar. The asphalt absorbed the neon signs, turning them upside down.
Aki retrieved his black umbrella from the stand by the entrance. He had left it there when they came in. There were no other umbrellas in the stand, as no one had visited the building for three weeks.
Angel stood under the eaves, staring at the rain the way a cat looks at water: as if it were a personal insult.
“Did you know it was going to rain?”
“The forecast said forty percent.”
“You brought an umbrella for forty percent?”
Aki didn't answer; he opened the umbrella.
“I can wait” Angel said. “It'll clear up eventually.”
“It’s going to rain until morning.”
“Then I’ll wait until morning. My schedule is open.”
Aki held the umbrella open and waited. He didn't say “Come.” He didn't walk away either. He simply stood there. Rain pitter-pattered against the black fabric. Drops trickled off the ribs of the umbrella, falling in a steady line onto the pavement before them.
Angel looked at him. Then at the umbrella. Then at the space beneath it, as if making a calculation.
He took a step forward.
It was an umbrella built for one. It was never intended to shelter two people—especially not with a mandatory distance between them. Aki pinned his arm to his side, tucking his elbow inward. He held the handle of the umbrella against his chest, as far from Angel as possible. He tilted the umbrella to the left, so subtly it was almost imperceptible.
They walked.
Beneath the umbrella, Angel's halo appeared clearer. A pale light struck the inside of the black fabric, illuminating the side of Aki's face: the line of his jaw, a strand of oily hair stuck above his ear, the drying edge of the cut on his forehead. Angel watched him for a moment. Looking at Aki wasn't exhausting. Was it even… relaxing? That was something worth pondering but Angel set it aside for now.
“Where are we going?”
“To the station.”
“I’m going to the dormitory at headquarters. That’s the opposite way.”
“The dorm cafeteria is closed.”
“How do you know?”
“It's ten-thirty.”
Angel conceded the point. They walked in silence for a few paces. A cyclist sped past them, raincoat fluttering.
“Pff but I am hungry,” Angel said.
“I know.”
“How?”
“You didn't eat lunch either.”
Angel turned his head. Aki was looking straight ahead.
That afternoon at lunch, in the headquarters cafeteria, Angel had taken his tray and sat at a table. He had looked at his soup, decided it wasn't interesting enough, and left the tray untouched. Sometimes he had quite an appetite; other times, staying hungry was simply easier. Aki had been three tables away at the time, his back turned, listening to one of Kobeni's endless apologies. Or so Angel had thought.
“Eating is exhausting” Angel said.
“There’s food at home.”
Angel kept walking. Rain poured from the edge of the umbrella in thin ribbons.
“Is that an invitation?”
“It’s a statement of fact.”
“Hm.”
They crossed a street and stopped at a red light. The glow of a nearby vending machine spread across the wet asphalt like a blue lake.
“I accept the statement” Angel said.
The light turned green.
As they crossed, Angel noticed that Aki's right shoulder was soaked through. The fabric of his jacket had darkened, rain seeping from the shoulder seam down to his elbow. He looked at his own shoulders. Bone dry. Even the tips of his wings were barely damp.
“The umbrella is tilted toward me.”
“It isn't.”
“Your shoulder is wet.”
“It's raining.”
The answer explained nothing, but it wasn't wrong either. Angel was beginning to realize that most of Aki's answers were like this: sentences that closed the door without locking it. Anyone who wanted to could push it open. Angel didn't push. Pushing was exhausting.
Still, he glanced at the shoulder once more. Then, without quite knowing why he did it, he folded his wings a little tighter. Just to open up another centimeter or two of space under the umbrella.
Aki continued to tilt the umbrella.
One of the last trains was nearly empty. At the far end of the car, a salaryman with a loosened tie dozed. By the door, a student nodded his head to the music leaking from his headphones.
Aki and Angel sat down, leaving a seat between them. Aki rested his sword vertically between his knees, sheath and all. Angel closed his eyes the moment he sat.
Two stops later, Angel's head began to tilt sideways.
Slowly, a little more with every lurch of the train. The way a sleeping person's head tilts, surrendering to gravity, leaning toward Aki's shoulder.
Aki watched the head coming. His right eye showed him three seconds into the future: Angel's cheek resting against the shoulder of his soaked jacket. There was a jacket between them, not bare skin. It would probably be fine.
Probably.
Aki lifted his sword from between his knees and set it upright on the empty seat between them. He took off his jacket and wrapped the dry side over the hilt.
Angel's head rested against the jacket-wrapped hilt of the sword and stayed there.
The salaryman across from them had woken up. He looked first at Angel's halo, then at his wings, then at his head leaning against the sword hilt, and finally at Aki. Aki looked right back at him. After receiving Aki's warning glare, the salaryman decided for the next two stops that the darkness outside the window was deeply fascinating.
When Angel woke up, they had arrived at their station. A mark from the sword hilt was pressed into his cheek.
“What was I leaning on?”
“The sword.”
Angel felt the mark with his fingers.
“It was comfortable” he said, almost sounding aggrieved.
III.
The moment the door opened, Power threw herself at them.
“AKI! I’M STARVING! I’M DYING OF HUNGER! DENJI ATE MY PUDDING!”
“It didn't have your name on it!” Denji yelled from inside.
“As if you can even read, you idiot!”
“You can't write either!”
“SLANDER!”
Power, who had latched onto Aki's arm and was trying to pull him inside with both feet planted, suddenly froze. She stared at the creature standing in the doorway behind Aki, its wings soaked. Her eyes widened.
“Aki brought the winged thing with him!”
“You mean the Angel Devil?” Denji asked, stepping into the hallway holding a half-eaten rice ball.
“The Chicken Devil!” Power burst into laughter.
Angel looked at them both. Then he looked at Aki, who was taking off his shoes.
“Is it always like this here?”
“Yes.”
“Hm.”
Power circled Angel once, sniffed his wet wings, and wrinkled her nose.
“Smells like a wet bird.”
“I am a wet bird” Angel said.
Power seemed to weigh this answer. Then, with the air of a monarch satisfied that Angel wasn't challenging her authority, she nodded.
“They say you’re dangerous, but I’m much more dangerous.”
“Okay.”
“WAY more dangerous.”
“Okay.”
Power didn't care for such an easy victory. She took another lap around him.
Denji, meanwhile, was staring at the halo. Mouth agape, eyes narrowed, like a child seeing an insect for the first time. Then he raised his hand and slowly reached his fingers toward it.
“Is it hot? Does it burn?”
Without lifting his head, still untying his shoelaces, Aki caught Denji's wrist. Denji's hand stopped in midair, an inch from the halo.
“You know you shouldn't touch it.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll eat your lifespan, remember?” Angel said.
Denji snatched his hand back.
“How much would you eat?”
“I don't know. How many years do you have?”
Denji hid his hand under his armpit and kept it there, at least until dinner.
A few seconds later, he pulled Aki into the corner by his sleeve and whispered in a voice that wasn't particularly low:
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Ask him yourself.”
“I can't! That's rude!”
“Then don't ask.”
Denji couldn't resist. He marched up to Angel, stood tall, and cleared his throat.
“Are you… well… a boy or a girl?”
Angel looked at him calmly, as if he hadn't heard the question a hundred times before.
“Which one are you hoping for?”
Denji's face went through several weird expressions. His eyebrows twitched first one way, then the other. His lips tried out a few answers, discarding them all. Inside his head, the gears of a massive, overly complex machine ground noisily together.
“…Either is fine?”
“Okay” Angel said.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN OKAY?!”
“Denji” Aki called from the kitchen. “Set the table.”
Meowy, the household cat, ignored the commotion completely and strolled into the living room. She stopped in front of Angel and spent a long moment sniffing the tip of one of his wings. Then, as if coming to a decision, she curled up at the feet of Angel, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Power's jaw dropped.
“Meowy! Traitor! I raised you!”
“The cat isn't even yours” Denji said.
“EVERYTHING IS MINE!”
Angel didn't touch the cat. He kept his hands resting on his knees, watching the cat's warmth spread into his leg. Cats weren't like humans. They didn't run from him, they weren't afraid of him; they simply came over and slept beside him. Angel had always appreciated that. It was a low-effort relationship.
The kitchen was small. Aki had removed his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair, rolling his shirt sleeves up to his elbows. He unfolded the handkerchief in his palm, washed the cut under cold tap water, and applied a bandage. Carefully folding the bloody handkerchief back up, he slid it into his apron pocket.
The rice was cooked. He had set the timer on the rice cooker before leaving that morning.
Angel was leaning against the kitchen doorframe. The cat had followed him and remained at his feet.
Aki was grating ginger. His movements were brief, measured, with no wasted energy. Grater, ginger, bowl. Soy sauce, mirin, a pinch of sugar. He arranged thin slices of pork on the cutting board, then finely shredded the cabbage. Every time the knife struck the board, it made the exact same sound. Angel listened to it. It sounded like a metronome. Or a drop of rain falling at regular intervals onto a distant roof.
“Do you want me to help?”
“No.”
“Good. I was asking out of politeness.”
“I know.”
The pan sizzled. The moment the meat touched the hot surface, the kitchen filled with the aroma of ginger and caramelized sugar. Angel's stomach made a loud confession without asking his permission first.
Aki didn't turn around. But he added one more slice of meat to the pan.
“Where did you learn this?” Angel asked.
“Learn what?”
“How to cook.”
“Someone had to.”
Angel weighed his next question: Was there no one else to do it but you? The question sat on the tip of his tongue. Aki shook the pan, flipping the meat. It sizzled loudly once more.
Angel didn't ask the question. He found the answer in the sizzle of the pan and saw no need to ask again.
“Cabbage is poison!” Power shouted from the living room.
“It isn't” Aki said.
“You’re trying to kill me!”
"If only it were that easy."
Four people barely fit around the low table. Denji and Power shared one side, waging a war of elbows over the boundary line. Angel sat on one side, the cat still at his feet. Aki sat diagonally across from him.
Aki brought the bowls over one by one.
That was when Angel noticed it. Perhaps he had noticed it before, but until that moment he hadn't put a name to it.
Aki didn't hand him the bowl. He placed it down on the table before him. The bowl touched the wood, Aki's fingers pulled back, and only after those fingers retracted did the bowl belong to Angel. The chopsticks arrived the same way. Laid down neatly to the right of the bowl, atop the rest. The soup bowl came the same way. The teacup too.
It was like that at headquarters as well. Aki never handed him files directly; he left them on his desk. He didn't hand him canned coffee from the vending machine; he set it on the bench beside Angel. He didn't hold doors open for him; he pushed them all the way back and let go, letting the door hover open on its own. Angel had initially thought it was distance. Coldness. People usually avoided him like that. First they withdrew their hands, then their eyes.
But Aki didn't withdraw his eyes. He only withdrew his hands. And he did it not out of pani, but calculation. A cold, meticulous, almost polite calculation that left no room for error, ensuring two hands would never accidentally reach for the same spot on the rim of a bowl or the corner of a file.
Angel had never met anyone who took such deliberate care not to touch him. People usually fled from him in a hurry. Aki wasn't fleeing. Aki was measuring.
He didn't know what it meant. He set it aside. The things he was setting aside were beginning to pile up.
“Itadakimasu!” Denji yelled, stuffing his mouth.
Power finished her meat in three bites and shoved her cabbage onto Denji's plate. Then, without hesitation, she reached her chopsticks across the table and snatched a slice of meat from Angel's bowl.
“Tax!" she said, her mouth full. “The tax for living in this house.”
“I don't live here” Angel said.
“Then visitor's tax!”
Angel didn't argue. The meat was gone. There was no point in arguing over something that was already gone.
Aki said nothing. Using his chopsticks, he picked up a slice of meat from his own bowl and placed it in Angel's. The tips of his chopsticks didn't so much as graze the edge of the bowl.
Denji froze, chopsticks hovering in midair.
“Why don't you give me any?”
“You ate your portion.”
“He ate his portion too!”
“Power ate his.”
“DISCRIMINATION!” Power screamed, completely forgetting that she was the one who had committed the theft.
Angel looked at the meat in his bowl, then at Aki. Aki was eating his rice. His face betrayed nothing—nothing that revealed more than the background noise of Power, who hadn't shut up for an hour.
Angel ate the meat, slowly.
He always ate slowly anyway. He chewed every bite for a long time, pausing to look into his bowl before continuing. Power couldn't bear watching it.
“Why do you eat so slowly?”
“Eating fast is exhausting.”
“Is everything exhausting to you?!”
“Most things.”
“I never get tired! I am Power! I am—”
Ten minutes later, Power was snoring with her face pressed against the table right beside her rice bowl.
Denji stared at her for a moment, then turned proudly to Aki:
“Kishibe killed me eleven times today.”
“Good job.”
“Power died twelve times. She thinks she won.”
“Didn't she?”
“I don't know,” Denji said, scowling. “What were the rules again?”
Angel gathered the last grains of rice from the bottom of his bowl. Setting it down, he looked at Aki.
“It's better than the cafeteria.”
“The cafeteria is pretty bad.”
“Yes. But I liked the cafeteria.”
Aki looked up.
“Now I won't be able to like it anymore” Angel said, as if reading a weather report. “That’s your fault.”
Silence fell over the table for a moment. Power snored. On the television, someone was shouting in a commercial, trying to sell something.
“There’s more rice” Aki said.
IV.
By the time the dishes were done, it was nearly midnight.
Denji was asleep on the rug in front of the TV. One of his arms had fallen across Power's face. Power accepted it in her sleep like a deserved punishment, grunting occasionally and trying to bite Denji's arm. An old monster movie was playing on the screen. Something made of rubber was destroying a city made of cardboard. Because the volume was turned down, all this destruction unfolded in deep, strange tranquility.
Aki stepped onto the balcony and lit a cigarette. Vowing for the third time this week that he would quit after this pack.
The rain had thinned out. It was less rain now than humidity hanging in the air. It glistened like dust around the streetlights, blurring the distant building lights. In the narrow alley below, a cat had taken shelter beneath the lid of a trash can. Not Meowy, another cat.
The balcony door slid open behind him. Angel stepped out and, without a word, leaned his back against the wall beside the glass door and sat on the floor. His wings curled slightly as they pressed against the wall. His halo cast a round, pale light onto the balcony ceiling.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
“Smoking is bad for your health” Angel said.
Aki blew out a puff of smoke.
Angel weighed the silence. Then, like someone who had arrived late at the answer to a math problem, he nodded.
“Ah. Right. Doesn't matter for you.”
“Cut it out.”
“Okay.”
He cut it out. The smoke drifted lazily through the damp air, dispersing slowly. The cat below emerged from beneath the trash can lid and vanished into a doorway.
“How much time is left?” Angel broke the silence.
“I’m not counting anymore.”
Angel pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. He looked at his hands. Like someone looking into a toolbox, trying to remember what was inside.
“I could find out.”
Aki took the cigarette from his lips.
“If I touch you, I’ll feel it” Angel said. “How much I take. How much is left. Like reaching your hand into the bottom of a jar to see how full it is.”
“And you’d take it.”
“And I’d take it.” Angel shrugged. “Yeah. There's a flaw in the method.”
Aki took another drag from his cigarette. A long drag. The tip glowed bright red, then faded.
“Then let's not know.”
Angel looked at him. Aki was looking out at the city.
Angel turned the sentence over in his mind for a moment. Let's not know. First-person plural. Aki spoke to everyone else using “you” and “I.” The word “we” or "us" at least as far as Angel had heard was reserved for official reports at headquarters, in sentences that began with “as a team.”
Angel set that aside, too.
“I wouldn't have done it even if you said yes.”
Silence settled over the balcony once more. For a time, both stared out at the damp cityscape.
“I don't want to be friends with humans” Angel said later, again breaking the quiet. “They die too fast.”
“I don't want to be friends with you either.”
“Good. We have a deal.”
“We have a deal.”
The moisture left behind by the rain gathered in small droplets on the balcony railing. The droplets merged, grew heavy, and fell one by one into the darkness below. Angel counted them. At seventeen, he stopped counting. Counting led nowhere.
“Be at headquarters by seven at the latest tomorrow,” Aki said.
“Ah, no, I can't wake up that early. I’ll reach the dorms in the middle of the night. Train services won't start until—”
“Sleep on the couch.”
Angel raised his head.
Aki was still looking out at the city. The cigarette was between his fingers, its ash long and ready to fall. He had spoken the sentence as if saying “it’s going to clear up tomorrow.” Not a decision, but an observation. It wasn't an invitation either. It was a statement of fact.
Angel stood up. It was his second great physical effort of the day. He shook his wings, sending a few droplets splashing onto the balcony floor. Walking over to the railing, he stood beside Aki.
There were about thirty centimeters between them.
Aki hadn't measured it. He didn't need to. For two weeks, at every door, in every corridor, in every elevator, on every bench, under every umbrella, he had maintained that exact distance. His body knew it automatically now: how close he could get, where he had to stop, at what angle his elbow needed to stay. Thirty centimeters. The width of a bowl. The breadth of a sword hilt. The distance of an unextended hand.
Angel placed his hands on the balcony railing. Aki's left hand rested on the railing too, the cigarette held in his right. Two hands resting on the same wet iron, thirty centimeters apart.
“My wings are wet,” Angel said. “I’ll soak your couch.”
“I laid out a towel.”
Angel turned his head to look at him.
In that moment, Aki's right eye showed him four seconds into the future.
He hadn't asked it to show him. His right eye did that sometimes. Outside of fights, when unbidden, it opened little windows before him as if trying to tell a story. Usually, they were mundane things. A glass tipping over. Power sneezing. A knock at the door.
This time, what it showed him was Angel.
Four seconds later, Angel was smiling.
It wasn't a large smile. Just one corner of his lip lifted slightly. Those eyes—always half-closed, always mildly bored with everything—forgot to be tired for a single moment. It was exquisite and beautiful. The face of someone who had finally found the answer to a riddle, only to realize the answer was stranger than the riddle itself.
Aki had four seconds.
He looked at the ash on his cigarette.
The ash was long, gray, ready to snap off. Aki stared at it. One second. Two. The ash trembled. Three. On the balcony railing, two droplets merged and grew heavy. Four.
Beside him, thirty centimeters away, something happened on Angel's face. Aki didn't look.
The ash snapped and fell into the darkness.
Deep inside his right eye, somewhere very far away, he thought he heard something chuckle. A cheerful, thick, familiar voice: The future rules! Aki blinked. The voice was gone.
“Hayakawa.”
“What?”
Angel was quiet for a moment.
“Nothing. Good night.”
The balcony door opened and closed. Aki remained on the balcony alone. One hand on the railing, a dying cigarette between his fingers.
And so Hayakawa Aki became perhaps the first human ever to see the Angel Devil smile from the heart. Four seconds early.
And because Aki was looking at his cigarette ash the moment that smile materialized, Angel never knew he had seen it.
V.
Inside, the television was still on. The rubber monster had died the cardboard city had been saved and the credits were rolling.
Angel lay on the couch. Beneath him, precisely where his wings would rest, lay a bath towel folded in half. Angel didn't even look at it. He spread his wings over the towel and lay on his side so they wouldn't be crushed.
Aki turned off the TV. He pulled three blankets from the closet. He tossed one over Denji and one over Power. Tossing was the exact word for what he did. He folded the third and set it on the armrest of the couch, at Angel's feet. He didn't cover him with it. Covering him would require leaning over, pulling the edge of the blanket, smoothing its sides. Fingers would get too close. He simply left it there.
Without opening his eyes, Angel reached out, pulled the blanket over himself, and tucked it in.
“Aki.”
“What?”
“Turn off the lights.” A yawn. “If I turn them off, something will happen.”
Aki turned off the lights.
In the dark, the halo emitted a round, pale light. It struck the ceiling, the wall, Denji's open mouth, Power's toes. The room transformed into a quiet, bluish space, like a closed aquarium watched over by a night guard on duty.
Aki did the laundry at night. The mornings were reserved for other chores.
Squatting before the washing machine in the bathroom, he emptied his pockets. It was one of the rules of living in this house, learned the hard way. From Denji's pants came a bottle cap, two coins, a gum wrapper, and a crumpled piece of paper Aki preferred not to identify. From Power's cardigan pocket came a bone. A small, white bone he hoped belonged to a chicken. He threw that in the trash too.
He picked up his own jacket. Removing the three wristwatches from the inner pocket, he lined them up on the edge of the sink. The plastic one was still running. In the quiet of the bathroom, its ticking sounded louder than it was.
The right shoulder of his jacket was still damp. Aki squeezed the fabric in his palm, and a drop or two trickled through his fingers.
On his left shoulder, there was a feather.
Small, white, about the length of a finger. Stuck to the fibers of the rain-soaked wool, its edges slightly curled. He didn't know how it had gotten there. Walking under the umbrella, a wing must have moved. Detached from the wing, the feather must have taken a brief journey through the air, crossing thirty centimeters to land on the jacket's shoulder.
Aki took the feather between two fingers and held it up to the light.
He stood still for a long time.
Then he stood up, placed the jacket into the machine, and walked out of the bathroom. Tiptoeing through the dark corridor past the sleeping figures, he went to the front door. His black umbrella hung beside the coat rack, still wet. Aki unclasped the strap, parted the folds slightly, and tucked the feather inside, into the layer of fabric between two ribs. He closed the folds, fastening the strap again. He didn't know why he did it. He didn't think about it. Aki had things he set aside too.
He returned to the bathroom. He pulled Angel's handkerchief from his apron pocket. The dried blood had turned brown. He filled the sink with cold water. Hot water would set the blood into the fabric. He had learned that the hard way, too. He began to wash the handkerchief. The blood slowly dissolved into the water in pink clouds.
The plastic wristwatch continued to tick on the edge of the sink.
VI.
Aki was already awake by five in the morning.
The sun was up. All that remained of last night's rain were a few puddles along the curb reflecting the sky, and a cool, clean scent hanging in the air. On the clothesline on the balcony, a white handkerchief swayed gently in the wind among the laundry.
Miso soup was on the stove, the rice was warm, and the tamagoyaki was sliced. Aki was now tying his hair in front of the small mirror in the hallway. A hair tie was in his mouth, both hands behind his head. He pulled his hair tightly into a topknot. He wasn't looking in the mirror. He didn't need to.
Angel sat up on the couch. The blanket draped over his shoulders, his hair stuck to one cheek, his halo nearly invisible in the morning light. He stared into space. Waking up seemed to come to him not as a decision, but as something that happened to him.
“What time is it?”
“Five-thirty.”
“Why?”
There was no answer to that question. Aki didn't reply.
Angel watched him for a moment. The hair tie looping twice, the topknot tightening.
“Why do you tie it like that?”
“It’s easy.”
“Like old swordsmen.”
“I said it's easy.”
Angel didn't ask another question. Anyone who answered the same question twice with the exact same words usually gave the same answer on the third try.
“I might be sick today,” he said instead.
“You’re not.”
“I said ‘I might be.’ I didn't say ‘I am.’ I’m talking about a possibility.”
“Breakfast is ready.”
Angel pondered the possibility for a moment. Then, deciding breakfast was more concrete than a possibility, he got up.
Two minutes later, Power arrived at the table half-asleep, one eye closed. She sat down, reached for the eggs, and spotted Angel.
“The chicken is still here!”
“I’m still here.”
“Do you live here now?”
“No.”
“Good! Because this is my house and this house belongs to me.”
“Aki's name is on the lease,” Denji said. His eyes were closed as he tried to guide rice to his mouth.
“WHAT IS A LEASE?!”
Aki turned on the morning news. A smiling woman presenting the weather forecast said there was a ten percent chance of rain for the evening.
They walked to headquarters. Denji and Power split off at the intersection to head to training. As Power left, she turned back to Angel and shouted, “Next time I’m going to eat one of your wings!” Angel said, “Okay.” Power walked away, once again unsatisfied.
It was a sunny day. The sky was deep blue, cloudless, washed clean. In Aki's hand was the folded black umbrella.
Angel looked at the umbrella. Then at the sky. Then back at the umbrella.
“There’s no rain.”
“It might rain this evening.”
“The forecast said ten percent.”
“Ten percent.”
Aki said it as if repeating a number were explanation enough. For Angel, in a way, it was. They kept walking.
Ten percent. Yesterday it had been forty percent. Angel began to run a calculation in his head, but he didn't finish it, because he didn't like where the math was heading.
It was interesting that a man who prepared for a ten percent chance of rain wouldn't prepare at all for a hundred percent certainty.
Angel didn't say it. He set it aside. The side was overflowing now.
The Special Division 4 office, like everything newly established, was still a bit empty, a bit too clean. A few desks had no owners. A few belonged to newcomers who hadn't yet found time to fill their drawers.
Angel sat at his desk. He prepared to rest his head on his arms, as he did every morning.
In the middle of the desk lay a handkerchief.
A white, square handkerchief, folded neatly into quarters. Its edges were pressed so sharply that it looked as if it were cut from paper. There wasn't a single stain on it. It smelled faintly of soap and sunshine.
Angel looked at it.
Two desks away, Aki was working on a report. His pen moved across the paper at a steady pace. On the corner of his desk sat three separate envelopes, each with a name written on top. One of the envelopes was ticking faintly in the quiet office.
Aki didn't raise his head.
“I told you not to give it back” Angel said.
“It had blood on it.”
“Yes. That’s why I told you not to give it back.”
“It doesn't anymore.”
Angel picked up the handkerchief. He lifted one corner to look. The iron marks were pressed deep into the fabric, as though someone had pressed down hard on every edge several times. Even under the closest inspection, no trace of the bloodstain remained. It had been washed in cold water. Someone had to know that. Someone had to do that in the middle of the night, among sleeping people, standing over a sink.
Carefully, without disturbing its folds, he slid the handkerchief into his jacket chest pocket.
Then he rested his head on his arms. He didn't sleep. But he pretended to sleep. That counted as a kind of work, too.
An hour later, as Aki passed his desk to submit his report, Angel spoke without raising his head.
“What did you write in the report?”
Aki stopped. He placed the report on Angel's desk, where he could read it. His fingers pulled back from the edge of the paper—pulled back, thirty centimeters back.
Angel opened one eye and read:
The Angel Devil directly contributed to neutralizing the target by cutting power to the building during the critical phase of the mission.
“That’s a lie” Angel said.
“You turned off the lights.”
“I pulled a lever down.”
“A contribution.”
Angel read the report once more. Directly contributed. He lingered on the words for a moment.
“Will it reflect on my paycheck?”
“No.”
“Then why did you write it?”
Aki picked the report up from the desk and walked toward Makima-san's office. He didn't answer. He didn't even offer one of his sentences that closed the door without locking it. He simply walked away.
Angel looked at his back. At his right shoulder. The jacket was dry now, bearing no trace of last night's rain.
He rested his head back on his arms.
VII.
Four days later, in the late afternoon, it rained.
It was ten percent again.
That day, in a cardboard factory in Ōta, they had dealt with a small, ill-tempered Devil that hid inside boxes and dragged anyone who opened them inside. Angel had worked for two full minutes this time. It was a record in his personal history, one he was bound to remind everyone of for the next week. Aki had a cut on his cheek. It was thin as a paper cut, but because of the Devil's cardboard teeth, it hurt far more than any paper cut.
They stood at the station exit. Rain poured down from the edge of the eaves in a thin curtain.
Aki unclasped the umbrella and opened it.
Something fell out.
Small, white, about the length of a finger. Beneath the station light, between the rain and the glow, it spun slowly in midair. Hesitating, drifting first right, then left, it landed on the toe of Angel's shoe.
Angel bent down and picked it up between two fingers.
He stared at it for a long time.
“This is mine.”
“I don't know.”
“This is mine. I know my own feathers.” He held the feather up to the light, turning it. “From the lower section of the right wing. Third row from the outside.”
Aki held the umbrella open. He was looking straight ahead.
“The wind must have carried it.”
“Inside the umbrella?”
Aki didn't answer.
Angel looked at the feather once more, then at Aki. Then he slowly placed the feather into his jacket chest pocket, right beside the ironed handkerchief.
“Walk” Aki said. “You’re getting wet.”
Angel stepped under the umbrella.
Thirty centimeters. Arm pinned to the torso, elbow tucked inward, handle against the chest. The umbrella tilted to the left, so subtly it was almost imperceptible.
They walked. Rain pitter-pattered against the black fabric. The halo cast a pale light onto the inside of the umbrella. That light fell onto the side of Aki's face, onto the thin cut on his cheek, onto the line of his jaw. Angel looked at him. Looking at him still wasn't exhausting. In fact, beyond not being exhausting, looking at Aki was unavoidable. Angel's eyes constantly found Aki's face. Angel didn't know which side to set this on. There were no sides left.
A few steps later, Aki's right shoulder began to darken.
“Your shoulder is getting wet again,” Angel said.
Aki didn't answer.
Angel folded his wings a little tighter. A centimeter or two. It wasn't enough. It was never enough.
Aki was looking straight ahead. Rain poured from the edge of the umbrella in thin ribbons. Falling on his right shoulder, his right arm, his right hand…
yet for some reason, it was the left side of his chest that ached.