“Now, the thing about friendliness is that truthfully, it’s not about personality. Yes, I know what it is you’re thinking. Aren’t nice, extroverted and bubbly people the most friendly? Well, that’s part of it. But to really come across as friendly, and I mean friendly in the greatest sense of the word, you need to have no personality at all.”

  Dexter thumbed through the book titled “Social Customs” on his thigh and held it open to a random page, though he wasn’t really looking at it. He was speaking from the soul, which he was prone to doing at length.

  “When you meet new people, the first thing on your mind should be their personality, not yours. I mean, who doesn’t feel encouraged to open up when asked about their holiday plans and the number of pets they own all the way down to the ones buried in their back garden? The more of your own personality you show, the more they’ll defer to what you have to say–and then you lose your chance to warm them up to you, okay～?”

  It was two weeks later. December’s chill had given way to the new year’s freshness, and even though night still brought a sheen of ice across the cars and roads, something just felt different. 1990 was the beginning of a new decade, one with an uncertain future. The living room of Yugi’s apartment was bright, the sun shone in through the singular window, and Rin’s eyes were firmly closed to all of it.

  “I don’t make friends,” she deadpanned, leaning her head further back on the sofa.

  Dexter had been trying to explain the intricacies of social interaction to Rin for the better part of an hour, and she had spent the lesson folding her legs, adjusting her arms, and settling into a comfortable power nap. She had mastered the art of doing so while appearing to be awake and still, drifting off and occasionally rousing once more to give her tutor a brief grunt and nod. Whether or not Dexter knew this and enjoyed explaining his methods too much to stop was up for interpretation.

  The sleepy atmosphere in the air was compounded by the snoring, sprawled-out, pale form draped across the arm of the sofa that belonged to Shimeda Akahoshi. He had been napping there for hours after coming home drunk, his shirt undone and his hair an unspeakable thing. It seemed that he was the type to nap through anything, as even Dexter’s loud voice and the sounds coming in from the open window didn’t make him stir.

  Dexter, for his part, had been dutifully acting as if Akahoshi was a part of the furnishings, and as far as Rin was aware, not a word had even passed between them since their trio of incompatible personalities had begun meeting in the vast, empty apartment building.

  Aware of how juvenile she had sounded, Rin stirred enough to properly open her eyes before adding, “Not like you. I have a personality, and I’ll use it if I want to.”

  “Is that so? Actually, what’s your blood type?”

  “O-negative.”

  “Really!”

  Dexter pushed up his circular red sunglasses by the bridge, opening the book in front of his face in order to peer at her over the edge.

  “So it seems that you’re a hard-hitting, passionate woman with a confident and assertive streak, right? People with that blood type are particularly strong-minded, and they have a special skill in carrying a conversation through sheer force of will!”

  Rin stared at him silently.

  “Those types…aren’t prone to keeping their thoughts to themselves,” Dexter prompted, sunglasses sliding down his nose.

  Rin stared at him silently.

  “I might have the wrong list up,” he corrected hastily, catching his glasses in one hand and struggling to open the book back up with the other.

  “Is this necessary?” Rin asked, closing her eyes again. Whatever peace she’d been able to steal from her intermittent sleep had now drained away.

  “I work best left alone. If the others Yugi brings in can tag along behind me, then I won’t complain.”

  Dexter had pounced upon the chance to earn Yugi’s favour (and money) by being as helpful to the freshly-forming syndicate as he could. He had offered for Rin to stay in the large apartment building in light of her original room being compromised, and she was slowly coming to the realisation that accepting so readily was a mistake. He was always around; despite not living there, she walked in on Dexter and Yugi talking more often than she liked. He would say good morning when they happened to cross paths as she emerged from her small room on the fourth floor, and she would only tilt her chin.

  It wasn’t that Rin enjoyed being rude. On the contrary the thought of her behaviour didn’t even occur to her–but to be thrown into the midst of three strange, frustrating people as a woman who preferred solitude and quiet was a situation she didn’t like all that much.

  Although in fairness, Rin barely even noticed that she shared a building with Yugi. It was as she had expected–he was like a ghost. A ghost who couldn’t even be bothered to haunt the place properly. She wasn’t sure which room was his, only that it was somewhere on the highest floor of the building, and that no sound ever came from it. He was a light-footed little bastard. The two never crossed paths unless Dexter wanted to speak to them at the same time.

  Except for that one night, she recalled–tuning out Dexter’s words again.

  It was the night she killed another person.

  The weak sun had been out all day. Humidity clung to her leather clothes which reeked of sweat, blood and dirt. Rin stepped into the elevator and slammed her knuckles into the buttons, impatient. All she wanted to do was peel it off and soak for hours under the scorching spray of a showerhead.

  She rested her head against the metal, and tried to exhale. She wasn’t good at that. The tension remained coiled in her muscles, tightening her stomach. Not guilt over committing murder, but regret that she hadn’t done it sooner.

  When she opened them again she saw the smear of fresh blood on her fingers.

  It had been on the elevator buttons, bright and thin. When she reached the fourth floor, Rin saw the tiny droplets scattered across the floor that still glistened, as she switched on the tiny torch from her pocket and shone it down the empty, unassuming hall.

  Amongst it, there were little drops of oil.

  The trail led into the apartment where discussions had first been held. Somehow, Rin wasn’t on her guard. Her instincts didn’t flare up, didn’t alert her to anyone hiding in wait. The only scent she could smell was Yugi’s.

  The door to the apartment was unlocked, and she ducked her head to enter. Yugi stood there idle, motionless. The skin of his fingers was split apart, black and red, and dripping onto the floorboards. Judging from the small puddle he’d been stood there a while.

  Rin too remained in her place, shining the torch directly at his back.

  “You.”

  Yugi’s head turned to look at her. His eyes were calm, pupils shrinking down to pinpricks in the light until his eyes were a sea of grey. He didn’t speak.

  “You did that to yourself?" She stepped by him, and though he once more turned his head with her, the rest of his body didn’t move.

  When she turned on the light it looked like whatever spell held Yugi’s body in place dissolved. The young man blinked as the room suddenly brightened, and the next moment he was climbing onto the sofa, his injured hand raised limply aloft.

  She could see the intricate circuitry that made up the structure of Yugi’s fingers. Beneath the layers of skin that now hung off like a glove, the nerves were replaced with the tiniest wires that crisscrossed like the lines of a leaf, blue and yellow and red. Through steelwire muscles, she saw the tip of bone peeking through the very end, pink and living.

  “It’s lonely, being separated from God,” he said.

  Rin only scoffed.

  “You know I don’t believe in god. Clean up your mess, would you?”

  She couldn’t fathom how he’d injured himself like that. There was no sharp object in sight, clearly nobody else but them in the apartment. More to the point, Yugi didn’t seem like the type to harm himself intentionally. He got onto his knees as she watched him, beginning to press his sleeve into the puddle of fluids.

  “For fuck’s sake, stop using your clothes to clean things.” Rin yanked him up and Yugi was as pliable as a ragdoll underneath her, as if he hadn’t even considered the possibility that she could hurt him. The red stain now adorning his cardigan reminded her of the smile he’d given three days prior, and the imprint of fluorescent lights behind her eyelids.

  “Do you ruin everything you own like this?” The very idea was alien to her. For most ketsujin, clothing in their size was hard to come by, and Rin treasured her tailor-made outfit. She hand-washed it regularly, stitching up the tears it gathered, polishing her boots until they shone again.

  “It doesn’t matter. I can just buy another cardigan.”

  Of course he could. Yugi was small enough to fit into whatever he pleased.

  “Hah. Is that so. With the money that god gave you, va?”

  Rin shook him by the arm and he wobbled along with her movements, still looking down at his hand. “Enough, go find a cloth. Or try not to bleed on the floor at all, next time.”

  Yugi looked up at her and smiled, but this one wasn’t nearly as compelling as the last. It was just as serene and lacklustre as usual.

  “I don’t keep much in this apartment. Do you have one to spare?”

  Yes, she did, but only wrapped around her arms, and she damn well didn’t feel like using them up on the results of Yugi’s own hubris.

  When she dropped him again, Yugi squatted on the floor, shrugging off the now-stained garment from his arms. It struck Rin then just how tiny he was compared to her. His head barely came up to her waist, even on his tiptoes. Her thighs were three times the width of his. Next to Dexter he looked maybe eighteen or nineteen, but beneath her shadow, Yugi was little more than a perpetual child.

  Rin thought back to what he’d said earlier.

  “If you’re really an angel, then just go back to heaven. Go talk to god again.”

  Yugi seemed preoccupied with looking into the puddle of blood and transmission fluid, at the faint hint of a reflection it bestowed upon his gaze.

  “I try to every day. But when an angel is given a mission, we become barred from heaven. After all, we aren’t quite the same when we come down here. We’re more than human…but less than entirely holy.”

  His exposed fingertip touched the puddle’s surface, and immediately the perfection of it was marred and exploded into hundreds of tiny ripples radiating out from a single point. That one moment of change transmuted into an expanse of differences.

  “Whenever I reach out for Him, my skin shears from my bones. It hurts more than I’m ever prepared for it to hurt.” Yugi uncurled himself from his squat, straightening as he leaned on the sofa to look up at Rin again, and his eyes were soft and understanding all of a sudden.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be alright.”

  “I’m not worried for your sake,” Rin snarled, folding her arms defensively. “If you die, you’ll get me into a lot of damn trouble, you hear me? I want to see you tear Zero Hand’s syndicate to the ground, and I’ll be there to watch while you replace him. Don’t try and get smart once you have the power. My priority is the ketsujin. All of us! Do you know why I do what I do? Do you?”

  She was shouting at him now. Shouting, because she had no other outlet for the pent-up rage.

  “I kill humans for revenge! Because the police never catch them! Because they praise them for killing us! Because our children get taken from us like cattle! And I don’t feel guilty, I never have–the only guilt I feel is for not doing it all earlier!”

  Rin grabbed Yugi by the shoulder, yanking him forward until they were face to face.

  “If I see you repeat Zero Hand’s mistakes–I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you! I’m not afraid of god. I’m not afraid of angels either. I bruised you once and I’ll hunt you down to the end of Japan and past that too if you ever let me down! You will make a change! YOU HEAR ME, YUGI?”

  Now that the two of them were so close, she could see the tiny flecks of metal and circuitry just below the surface of Yugi’s semi-transparent skin. He shimmered like glitter, like silver. The minute lines were only visible from a certain angle. Somehow, it looked like the dappled light of a forest floor, or tangled wires underneath a computer desk.

  Yugi placed his hand upon her own, interlacing their fingers together. His hand was so small it almost disappeared.

  “I love you, sister,” he whispered. “You were made in our holy image. All ketsujin are but His children. My purpose is to protect them.”

  He kissed her on the hand, but not like a lover–rather like a priest, taking on the grievance of his parishioner. Rin’s skin crawled and stung with a feeling like ice.

  “Blessed be your commitment to me.”

  That had been the only time the two ever spoke alone.

  Rin was shaken from her half-dreaming recollection by the door slamming closed.

  Dexter had stopped monologuing at her, she realised. There were faint voices outside, speaking in the foyer and slowly approaching the room she sat in. She sat up and stretched out her entire body, feeling joints crack and pop and her sticky eyes throbbing with hot dryness.

  She wasn’t sure how many other people Yugi had gone out and recruited, but she knew today had been the day she was required to sit there pleasantly and quietly and put up with meeting every single one of them. The mere idea of working in a group… it filled her with nothing but a bored, tired kind of dread.

  “...preferably suited as best it can be to your needs and habits, sir.” Dexter's voice faded into hearing. His tone was completely different to what it had been when he’d sat across from Rin–now it was the kind of manufactured voice only ever heard in customer service, and it grated at her.

  “Yes, just this way. Yugi will be here once I can confirm everybody has arrived, all right?”

  Rin fixed her gaze directly onto the door as it was swung open once again by Dexter, who stepped aside to allow the man he was guiding to enter the main room of the apartment.

  It was a broad-shouldered, stocky older man. He was tall, for a human at least, dressed in an expensive-looking suit buttoned neatly to the collar, with a stereotypical red tie just to finish off his image. His square jaw was clean-shaven, receding dark hair clinging for dear life to his head with a copious amount of styling gel. The moment their gazes met, Rin immediately narrowed her eyes in suspicion.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Everything of his looks spoke of an office worker, a corporate slave or high-ranking businessman; from the weary expression of nervousness on his face to the uninspired outfit. Not an underground criminal about to join a revolutionary group.

  He processed the glare she gave him immediately, dropping into a deep and excessive bow.

  “Good afternoon, I’m so sorry to bother you. My name is Paul Woodman, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, as if he were not only sorry for bothering her, but for existing in general and furthermore having a name which she needed to call him by. Then he extended his hand stiffly to shake, before half-withdrawing it uncertainly.

  She didn’t take it, and Paul left it hanging awkwardly in the air.

  “Rin,” was her only deference to their introductions. “Don’t bow like that, it’s dramatic.”

  “Right…I’m sorry about that.” After casting a confused glance at Akahoshi, who was still deeply asleep, he sat down on the sofa opposite her, his spine so straight it didn’t touch one inch of the backing. The sight almost amused her. She felt as if she were at some sort of prim and proper business interview as she watched him trying to get comfortable without looking too visibly relaxed.

  He was looking for Dexter–glancing occasionally over his shoulder, but the other man had left, clearly harried and stressed, and his questions were answered by the silence.

  Rin broke it after a moment.

  “You won’t suffer being alone with a ketsujin.”

  Paul jumped. Then he readjusted his tie, sweaty fingers slipping off the satin.

  “No, no, that’s…that’s not it. I didn’t mean to come across as rude. I’m just not accustomed to all- all this.”

  That was true, judging by his scent. He wasn’t afraid of her; just extremely wound up.

  “This?” Rin fluttered her hand in the air.

  “Yes, ah… this. I’m not–” Paul’s eyes flickered over to meet hers directly for the first time. “Well. To tell you the truth, I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  Ah.

  That’s what it was. He was still wet behind the ears, out of his depth in this unfamiliar environment. No wonder he seemed so conspicuous dressed in his neatly pressed suit that spoke of money–comfortable money.

  Rin couldn’t swallow the urge to mock him for it.

  “So this is your first time stepping outside. How does it feel? Did you feel a little too guilty after you turned a blind eye to the people on the streets? You might not be strong enough to make it, but you can try. Or if you can’t, you can buy your way out.” She punctuated her sentence with a laugh–a strained, bitter one.

  A real laugh was impossible when she had seen it all before. The empty promises, the words she overheard while trying to hunch down in a cramped store:

  “Did you hear, the police raided another ketsujin settlement again…”

  “Yes, there were so many families crammed in there! I saw the footage, it’s inhumane, right?”

  “I understand, they had to be moved along without any permits.”

  “Yes, well…it’s true. But I felt a little bad for them. I know that it’s not how things are to have them in Japan, they would do much better in their own country, but…there were children who were moved along. It’s a real shame, right?”

  A damn shame, she would think, struggling to fit through the tiny aisles, but what will you do about it? And the response was always the same. Revving engines, a beeping cash register, the hum of small talk, and nothing that ever qualified as an answer.

  “Don’t–don’t speak to me like that.”

  Paul was no longer stiffly inert, like a wooden soldier. He had raised his head to meet her gaze, hands twisting the perfectly creased seams of his pinstripe trousers.

  She blinked at him.

  “I don’t mean to come across as harsh, but it’s not like that at all. Really. I understand that you don’t trust my motives–I don’t expect you to. I worked as a license prosecutor. I’ve spoken to so many ketsujin who I had to pass over to the authorities, and every time–every time I did as I was told and stamped them as unlicensed.”

  Gripping onto it like a lifeline, Paul clenched a small metal badge between his fingers from the depths of his shirt pocket; a silver prosecutor’s badge, engraved with the tiny symbol Rin had come to loathe.

  “You’re right–I did feel guilty. I just accepted my job–the orders of my superior–and I participated in something terrible! I can’t defend myself one bit there. So when I got a letter asking me if I would be willing to risk joining a revolutionary group, I knew I had to take it, even if I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.”

  Distraught, Paul leaned his elbows on his knees and dropped his gaze, unable to meet her accusing eyes any longer. “This is it. This is all I can do! I can’t give back those ketsujin their homes or their freedom or their rights, but… maybe Yugi was right, you know? This is a sign from god, if he really is out there, to repent. To try my best to make up for it. So don’t laugh at me for realising the depth of my faults, alright? This is all I can do.”

  In the empty air left behind after Paul’s outburst, the only thing that disturbed it was the faint, muffled ticking of his wristwatch, like a metronome.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  Tick.

  For the first time, Rin had nothing to say.

  Her furrowed brow had uncreased, the usual squinting scowl on her face replaced with a blank, empty look of surprise.

  Nothing of what the man in front of her had said was a lie, that much was obvious. Raw chagrin and regret like that was hard to fake. And as she watched him sit there, sitting in the silence–an unfamiliar feeling of her own started to burn at her chest, creeping up to the back of her throat.

  She’d assumed Paul was the same as all the other humans she knew of. All talk and no action, faking their care and their pity, looking down upon her from where they stood beneath her. And yet Rin had judged him too quickly, and she saw in front of her a man who had given up his safety and comfort for the sake of alleviating his past mistakes, despite the trouble it would put him in.

  It was the bare minimum of human decency, worth no praise. And yet...

  Her hand twitched. She pinched the end of her bandages between two fingers, pressing tightly enough to turn the skin bloodless and white.

  “I see.”

  As Paul looked up Rin continued to stare right at him, her face settling back into the usual stern look, but her throat was still constricted into a hair’s-width opening that was almost incapable of letting any words escape.

  “You….have the right to be here.”

  Like an arduous climb, as if she were rolling Sisyphus's boulder up into the cloud layer, she spoke her sentence haltingly; and Paul’s eyes widened a little as he was taken aback.

  “Th- Thank you, really, I… I really didn’t mean to shout at you, I just–”

  She waved him off. “No apologies. Don’t explain.”

  For the first time, Paul’s tight mouth twitched into a semblance of a smile.

  “...Right.”

  She sensed that he might have more to say, maybe the desire to engage in a little small talk or further introduction, but Rin ended that avenue of conversation by kicking up one leg on the coffee table and shutting her eyes once more.

  A good ten or fifteen minutes passed before anything else disturbed her doze. More voices drifted in from the outside, this time multiple in number. Paul immediately fixed his tie, once, twice and then three times. She could hear him fiddling neurotically with the fabric, and tensed her jaw.

  The door opened yet again, and Rin tilted her head to the side to blink her eyes open into a glare–fixing it upon the five people who were now piling into the room, herded by Dexter, moving like fish out of water.

  A skinny boy with scraggly brown hair that hung, slick with grease, to his shoulders.

  A woman with a curvy, short build and a gas mask upon her face.

  A young man with a monocle and large, heavy metal gloves, his shirt and jeans adorned with numerous small items and shiny tools.

  A woman with a ruthless bob cut and an even sharper miniskirt who clutched onto a laptop beneath her arm.

  And lastly, a muscular man whose arms threatened to burst out of the sleeves of his simple blue shirt.

  Rin closely observed every one of them as they found their places in the room with varying degrees of confidence–the boy lurking behind the opposite sofa to her, ‘Miss Gas Mask’ hopping deftly onto the arm of it and swinging her legs back and forth like a small child. The only thought in her mind, as she made direct eye contact with the well-built man who had not shifted an inch since standing himself by the table, was that she didn’t judge a single one of them as being prepared for the task ahead of them.

  Perhaps she was being overly judgemental. Despite that, her glare didn’t abate. Until she saw that special flicker of grit in somebody’s eyes, her opinion of them would remain the same.

  Dexter re-entered the room with his phone gripped tightly in both hands, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen and not looking up as he spoke.

  “Is anyone here hiding Haruhiro Tenkawa behind your back?” he asked briskly, scrolling with his thumb. Despite how pleadingly he looked up and around at the motley group before him, not one raised their hand in response.

  “No? None of you? Right…” Trying to regain his composure, Dexter typed out a quick note and then returned it to his pocket. “That’s fine, don’t worry yourselves over it–”

  Rin tilted her head in mild curiosity, not recognising the name. “Who?”

  “Oh, ah…just one of the people who responded to Yugi’s listing. Only he’s been uncontactable for the past day, and as you can see he certainly isn’t here now. I wouldn’t concern yourself over–”

  “You have his phone number? I could find out where he lives and send you the address, if you want.”

  That level offer came from the monocled young man, who wore a look of extreme and chronic boredom. Dexter blinked at him with surprise.

  “Oh–that’s kind of you, Fukutetsu, but there’s no need. If Tenkawa really has bailed on us, then I’m sure Yugi will deal with it.”

  Yugi will deal with it. Rin felt herself bristle, and she liked even less how a flash of relief passed in varying degrees over everybody’s faces.

  They must’ve all met him already. Of course they laid down their faith to him so blindly. She was beginning to feel like the odd one out–like she was crazy, looking right into the eyes of an angel until her irises sizzled and she continued to insist: there’s no such thing as holiness, this is falsehood that is burning me.

  “You’re really confident that you could track somebody down with just their phone number? That’s so inspired! The woman with a gas mask hopped down from her seat to extend a hand to the young man Dexter had addressed as Fukutetsu; who very reluctantly shook it, before pulling away as if he had touched a slimy piece of food on the washing-up.

  “You can call me Bravo, okay? That’s an alias, but it’s the only one I have, so don’t look too deeply into it, yeaah-?” Her mature voice didn’t match the babyish quality of her face or diminutive height.

  “...I see.”

  The sheer strength of the disinterest in Fukutetsu’s clipped ‘I see’ should have obliterated not only their conversation, but also any and all future exchanges in the room, and sent everybody home immediately with the creeping feeling that they had overstayed their welcome. But Bravo was completely unruffled.

  “If that’s the case, could you find out the locations of missing people who have been kidnapped? The police have so much trouble with them, and I know how many cases get abandoned just because the person drops right off of the earth, like Tenkawa.”

  “...Maybe.”

  “How do you do it, then? Is it through your ability? Hm…something like tracking? Or, no, wait. You said you needed a phone number–or was it an address? So do you use clairvoyance to detect a person’s presence? Would that be clairvoyant-kinesis? I don’t know how scientists name all of the different kinds at all, really.”

  “...internet.”

  “Ooooooh! So, you’re a hacker, is that it? Say, do you think you could look me up just by my alias, and find out my real name? Go on, try it! I promise I won’t be mad. Just as long as you don’t say it out loud, all right!”

  “...no.”

  Whatever spiel Bravo had been about to run her mouth on next was cut off by some movement that occurred in the hall leading to the apartment, a rough and deep voice who spoke in a language incomprehensible to most of the occupants, but which shot through Rin’s neurons like an electric shock and caused her to sit up in her seat; because she had just picked up a scent which was both new and equally familiar.

  The man who emerged out of the doorway like an unfurling dragon had long teal hair that reached down to the very floor, swinging in dead-straight and flowing strands like the ribbons of some fancy ballgown. Just past the height of eight feet up into the atmosphere, he bent almost at the waist in order to enter successfully, the width of his muscular chest and toned arms rendering it almost impossible for him to fit. When he raised his head he met eyes with Rin from all the way across the room–and as soon as he did, the two of them straightened up in unison, as if a puppeteer had yanked up their strings.

  It was a completely unexpected sight.

  “Nari?” Rin asked in disbelief.

  “Rin? It’s you, isn’t it? No way, really! What the hell are you doing here?” he asked her in Ketsugo, deep voice lilting up with something like excitement. When Nari approached where she stood, the two of them ended up near chest-to-chest, fists clenched, backs rigidly stiff, and the strange sensation as if a pair of south magnets had been placed together: a competition, a repulsion.

  Out of the surrounding onlookers, Dexter was the only one who understood the spoken words between them. “Oh, you two know each other?” he demanded, his perfectly trimmed eyebrows shooting up, a little perturbed that he was not the first to hear of it.

  “My, my, my, this can’t be. Two ex-lovers? Friends turned bitter enemies, maybe?” Bravo rattled off, as if she were pitching the premise of a romance novel to a disinterested publisher. Her words disappeared into a vacuum, sucked away into the surrounding silence and the intensity of the staring match. There was a tense pause, wherein the two ketsujin maintained unwavering, unbroken eye contact. The only other sounds were soft, fast breathing, and the asynchronous ticking of Fukutetsu’s multiple watches, and the distant background noise of the outside streets–

  –and then, Nari dipped his head a few inches, coinciding with the upwards tilt of Rin’s chin.

  Whatever tension had been brewing washed away. Nari laughed again, like he still couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “So, you’ve ended up here too. What a surprise. How does it feel to be in the circle of humans?”

  Rin hit him on the shoulder with enough force to dent the door of a truck, and yet Nari only shifted his upper body an inch.

  “I would ask you the same,” she snapped. “You always were too ready to bend the knee. No wonder you found yourself someone new, va? Kys?daimavka.” ‘Scum eater.’

  The insult fazed him, rather visibly, as he flinched and squinted his hurt eyes at her. “Don’t be an idiot,” he retorted, beginning to back away from their previous intimidation stance, before sitting down heavily on the opposite sofa. The skinny ratlike boy, who had been sitting there unobtrusively, let out a panicked squeal as he scrambled back to avoid being flattened into a small patch of blood.

  “You know you’re glad to see I’m still alive.”

  Nari kicked up both booted feet onto the coffee table, leaving a small dent in the wood, but nobody challenged him yet–still wary, still judging whether he was aggressive or not. He had no eyes for the others around them. They were fixed firmly on Rin, and the amber irises glittered with raptured, fixated adoration.

  “You’ve grown stronger,” he said in admiration. “Now you’re beautiful.”

  Rin folded her arms as she too took her seat again, her gaze scanning the man up and down, letting no detail go unnoticed.

  He was taller than when they had last spoken near thirteen years ago. He had gone through a growth spurt, and filled out, the corded veins upon his forearms now raised like thick blue wires. His hair once poorly cut and dry was now thick, healthy, and flowing. It seemed like Nari was eating better than he had been since she knew him outside the city, in the ragtag collective known only as the Outer Road ketsujin.

  Struck by a strange sense of nostalgia, all Rin said in response was– “I expected you to get yourself killed by now.”

  Despite that, she couldn’t prevent the upwards twitch at the corner of her mouth.

  “You two…are friends?” Paul tentatively asked after the silence lingered, while the man who’s name Rin still didn’t know opened his cellphone, flicking through his messages.

  “Ah. Friend is a strong word.” Nari casually waved his hand, and she scoffed, picking her sharp teeth.

  “When I was younger, we trained together. That’s all. Of course, I saved his life many times. He followed me around like a little puppy, barking at my lap. Don’t let him act like he doesn’t care.”

  “Mmh, I saved your life too.” Nari’s cheeks darkened. “Are you still as reckless as you were when you were seventeen? Do all the car hoods in town have your blood on them from the times you ran into–”

  The narrow side of Rin’s hand came down like the rushing blade of a guillotine to meet directly with the base of his neck, and Nari choked on his spit while slumping forward and coughing heavily, the heaves transforming into wheezing laughter.

  The truth was that Nari had been one of the few who had truly accepted Rin. When she was found, crawling through the undergrowth, fifteen years old with all the blood in her body pouring out of her head. She remembered the feel of his father’s fingers, pulling out the bullet through layers of shattered skull. She remembered relearning how to speak and walk. She remembered relearning how to fight. She remembered the sight of the smoke-spewing factory chimneys towering high up from the dirt roads and filthy communes that surrounded the sprawling metropolis that was Namato. They had reminded her of open mouths, vomiting onto the perfect sky.

  She’d left, of course. Once there was little more to learn and her body ached to keep moving. It had been an unceremonious affair. A few things she had borrowed placed back on Nari’s bed, a quick word with his father, and Rin had disappeared. That was often the way with the younger ketsujin. Once they reached a certain age, they silently slipped away like chalk washed off a brick wall. Nari had never asked after her, and she had never bothered to find him.

  All at once a kind of universal shudder passed through the room that even put up Rin’s back. But while her shudder was one of discomfort, the others trembled in a unified rapture.

  She recognised that heavy, omnipresent buzzing before she heard the soft voice that emerged from outside the room, speaking gently and understandingly to Dexter in an indistinct undertone. Yugi pushed open the door, dressed in a flowing and elegant white kimono that looked to be made of silk; and the obvious cost of that alone made Rin’s upper lip curl.

  “Is everybody here?”

  “Yes–yes. Other than Tenkawa’s absence, everybody you asked for is accounted for.”

  “Thank you, Dexter.” A crooked pale finger brushed the man’s cheekbone as Yugi drifted past, causing him to flush.

  As he approached the coffee table, the gathered people all shuffled back to let him by, with varying expressions of deference. Quite at odds with his formal dress, Yugi sat down upon it, and the shimmery white fabric fell about his slim form as if he were shrouded in vapour.

  In the trance that followed, Yugi’s fingers peeked out from the hem of his sleeve. He began to uncurl the same pointer finger that he had brushed across Dexter’s cheek, and slowly the skin stretched out across the joints as the small digit extended to its full length. All the eyes in the room were drawn to it, even Rin’s, locked right onto the very tip where his shiny oval nail caught the daylight on its brightest point and flashed like the sun bouncing off polished metal.

  Then like the firing of an arrow the angel snapped it right back into position, and the room filled with the sound of exhaled breaths, as if he had been the one operating everybody’s lungs.

  “Let us begin Mass, shall we?” he said.