"What happens if I never get to see you again?" Takemikazuchi asks, staring with tearless eyes at the ground next to the other boy's feet.
The feet move. They're coming toward him, and he sucks in a short breath as the boy hugs him.
"You don't need me protecting you," he whispers, and Take's resolve nearly crumbles. He has told himself to never beg, to never show his weakness.
He wraps his arms around the other boy. The two of them hide for just a moment, inside the silence after the thunder: this child of a thousand storms and his first real friend.
/ / /
"Come back here at once!"
Takemikazuchi's heels scuff up dirt from beneath the grass; he throws a glance over his shoulder and sees his guardians pursuing him. They've dropped all their bags next to the car and start to chase him up the hill. But he's got a good lead on them.
The hill climbs, and climbs, and his lungs begin to burn; his shoelaces catch in the tangling grass. He trips, landing heavily on hands and knees, and looks back, expecting to see people catching up to him. Instead, Take sees nothing but an empty hillside: windless, treeless. After staring for a few seconds without comprehension, he scrambles to a crouch and yanks his shoelaces out of their knots, throwing both shoes and socks to the side before he turns around to keep running.
He takes in a sharp breath, seeing a river where there was once nothing but vacant hilltop—and on its banks, a huge building. Distorted figures crawl behind the screened windows, and the pump and hiss of hot water fills the erstwhile silence.
Before Take can speak, or move, there is a ripple in the view in front of him, like the strange landscape is a painting floating on water. The air is sucked out of his lungs, and every hair on his body stands up. There is a deafening crack.
And the hillside is no longer solitary.
"Why are you here?" a strange boy asks him.
It's a boy about Take's age, with long hair partly tied back, and dressed in loose, airy clothes. The expression on his face is perfectly, anciently void. Except for his eyes.
Take stares at the other boy. Even though his nerves still tingle from the shock of the river and the building's sudden appearance—as well as the unexpected intrusion of this stranger—he tries not to lose face.
"I just—I just wanted to get away. For a few minutes."
"Get away?" the strange boy repeats.
Take turns around, staring down the hillside. It's empty; it's just the two of them on the side of that misty river. Still, very soon, he expects to hear: You've done badly. Don't you want to be a good little boy?
He doesn't.
/
"I don't want to go back. Not yet..." the other boy says, with a strange, dead look on his face. Like he's been taught to fear himself.
Ōki doesn't know how to respond. Usually he is used to seeing such children—human children, when they cross into the Far Shore, tend to scream and cry for their parents. It's Ōki's job to guide them back across, sniveling.
They cry even more when he appears, when their noses are scorched with heat and ozone. But this boy isn't crying.
Ōki has never seen eyes with so much resentment bottled behind them. He has never seen eyes so terribly, terribly dry.
"Don't you want to go back, even a little bit?"
The other boy wipes his nose with a rough, dismissive gesture.
"I don't even know where this is. So how the hell am I supposed to decide?"
Ōki's eyebrows shoot up toward his hairline.
The other boy's forehead darkens, but he keeps his stony expression. He also crosses his arms. And, Ōki notices, he shrinks in on himself, as though expecting to be struck.
He's not safe here. A human can never be safe here.
The voice of common sense is usually loudest. But now it's being outshouted by that vulnerable posture, the small, uncovered feet streaked with scars.
Ōki sighs, and wonders if this is the right job for him after all.
/
"My name? What's so important about my name?" Take asks, after the other boy sneaks him into the building through a vine-covered side door.
"Don't let your name disappear from your memory."
"But why—"
"If your name goes away, you'll be stuck here forever."
Take shoots him a glance.
"Like you?"
He doesn't get an answer, and he knows he's right. Take scowls.
"If it's really so dangerous, then why are you bringing me here?"
The nameless boy stops short, and looks back at him with that eerie, void expression.
"Are you saying you want to return?"
Take's scowl just deepens, which is answer enough. So the two keep moving, into the dim heart of the bathhouse. Take almost misses the boy's next words:
"Don't worry, I won't let your name disappear."
/
"You're driving away customers," Ōki says, completely deadpan.
Take huffs, the color in his cheeks building with each new fistful of coal dumped into the furnace. He's been shuffled off to the boiler room ever since an antagonistic run-in with a sensitive Onama-Sama.
"That kind of ugly can't get fixed by just a bath," he mutters, throwing way too much coal into the chute and stomping off to gather more, sending Susuwatari scattering away from him in chittering waves.
"Don't attract too much attention, Takemikazuchi," Ōki says, keeping his tone patient.
"Easy for you to say! You just hang out around the border, making sure whiny brats get taken back to their parents. You didn't even warn me about all this…child labor!"
Ōki doesn't reply, just watches him scrape an armful of coal together. The Susuwatari mumble in awe.
"That's too much," warns Kamaji from his perch.
Take scowls and ignores both of them. He loses a little steadiness crossing back to the furnace, and when he gets there, the weight of the coal in his arms pitches him forward, straight toward the flesh-sizzling heat of the metal.
"Agh!" he yelps, throwing his arms up over his face and tossing coal everywhere.
Before Take crashes against the furnace, Ōki leaps forward, snatches the back of his robe and pulls, hard. The two of them hurtle backwards, hitting the floor with a resonant thud. Take lands on top of Ōki, his elbow jamming straight into his kidney. Ōki curses as white agony floods his nerves—it's such a foul word that Kamaji looks down at the two of them and chuckles.
Their undignified crash-landing sends the Susuwatari into a flurry of indignation. A few of them start pelting the two with some of the smaller pieces of coal. Take leaps up again, swatting at the sprites with both hands. When he gets to his feet, he glares down at Ōki.
"I was fine."
Ōki's throat tightens. He's still unable to move without the world dissolving in pain.
"Yes, of course you were. I'm sure you'd have been enormously pleased to live the rest of your life without most of your skin. My apologies."
Take stares down at him in a speechless mixture of humiliation and rage. High above both of them, Kamaji cackles.
"Silly babies, both of you."
Ōki props himself up on his elbows and stares down at his knees: frustrated with Take, infuriated with himself. He's supposed to protect the boy, not fight with him. He nearly doesn't notice the tap on his shoulder, and when it comes a second time, he looks up with a sharp word on his tongue.
Take holds a hand out, as though offering to help him up, although his eyes are fixed deliberately on empty space.
Ōki's fingers clench and unclench. He takes the hand. Hoisting himself off the ground, he does his best to ignore the brightness blooming from where their palms connect.
Take clears his throat as they both leave the boiler room.
"I was fine, though."
Ōki smiles. It's a bit of an unfamiliar sensation.
"I know."
/
When he stands on the bathhouse rooftop in the middle of the storm, Take can't find the right words—or even the right emotions—for when he sees Ōki: the real Ōki. He is a great golden ribbon, singing with heat as he vectors through the scorched clouds.
Take's eyes fill, and he tells himself it's just rainwater.
What would it be like, to have that kind of power? What would it be like, to burn your own fear into blackness and devour it?
"Ōki!" he shouts, cupping his hands. The lightning stops in its tracks, and Take can see it has a clearly defined shape. Proud wings; a slender, arcing body; a narrow, intelligent face with eyes the color of electricity.
In that kind of a shape, who would ever choose to change back—to become weak?
Take grips the railing until his knuckles are white. He leans forward into the storm. Maybe if he leans far enough forward, he too will take flight, become weightless, explode out of his skin into the same kind of undefeatable creature.
The dragon makes a startled noise, and Take snaps backward, away from the railing. He didn't realize how far he was leaning.
Then he looks back at Ōki, and realizes he was wrong to think those eyes couldn't hold fear.
/
Ōki worries about him. He worries. About this reckless, stupid, loud, idiot human he was supposed to send back into his own world. He worries that Takemikazuchi will follow his most destructive impulse and give away his name in order to stay here. He worries that after doing it, he'll only be filled with overwhelming regret.
Most of all, Ōki worries that…it might not be so bad.
Wherever Take came from, he didn't like it. He ran away on ruined feet from the people who left those angry red welts lifting across his toes, his ankles. The running must have been painful—but not worse than the thing he ran from.
A human can never be safe here.
Ōki throws his arm over his eyes, and tries to go back to sleep, and he can only see those scars.
Yes, maybe Take is not safe here. But at least here, he has someone who thinks about his safety. Protecting him might get Ōki killed, but the thought doesn't concern him as much as it probably should.
Why has he always stood at the border? Was it to help all those other lost ones? Or…had he just been waiting?
Exhaling in a short huff, he sits straight up and heads for the stairs. Since he's obviously not going to be able to sleep, he might as well get some exercise.
/
"You think I'll let you just die, you dumb dragon?!" Take yells.
Ōki lies on the floor, his whole long body crackling with energy, igniting the boards beneath him as he writhes in agony. Take gets down on his hands and knees, putting his face on a level with the struggling creature's.
"You can't! I'll hate you if you die," he screams right in Ōki's face. His voice breaks, but he continues:
"You can't, you can't—you said you'd protect my name!"
His words seem only to increase Ōki's distress; his tail thrashes like an angry viper, scorching and knocking over furniture.
Take goes suddenly quiet. His eyes are still tearless, and the air itself seems to have been seared of its humidity. All that fills him is dry-eyed determination.
He has always been told to push away weakness, but this is the first time he feels strong.
Reaching into the bone-cracking heat, he wraps both arms around Ōki's face, pushing with all his weight to keep the dragon still.
He's holding the sun against himself, and whether he burns or not, it doesn't really matter. Because, at last, at last, he knows Ōki's real name.
"Kiun. I will not let you die."
/ / /
"You don't need me protecting you," Kiun whispers, and Take's shoulders stiffen.
It's not fair; it's the opposite of fair. Just because he saved Kiun—just because he helped him remember his name—he has to leave.
Seriously, what the hell kind of rule is that?
"No, idiot, I mean what happens to you?" Take says.
He nearly laughs when Kiun pulls away from the hug, his cheeks hollowing out as his jaw drops.
"Wh-what…wait. What do you mean?"
"You can't be left to your own devices. What if you go forgetting your name again?"
Take cocks an eyebrow.
"I bet it doesn't even take a whole day."
Kiun turns a few distinct shades of red, and makes an inarticulate sound. Take waits for him to pull himself together. At last, Kiun says:
"You can't stay. They won't let you remain at the bathhouse after what happened."
"So, we won't stay at the bathhouse."
Kiun's coloring cycles through cherry to deep plum.
"We…?"
Take's stomach quivers, but he keeps his voice steady.
"Yep. You really think I'll let you go and get fatally wounded again?! It took a lot of trouble trying to get you back to yourself."
He's said it.
He waits, and he gets ready to fight Kiun on any opposition. But when he receives his answer, it turns out he was spooling himself up for nothing.
"I won't…I can't make you go back. I swore to protect you. Though I had no idea how difficult that would actually be."
Take snorts, and at the helpless look on Kiun's face, he bursts into outright laughter. But after a few seconds of unbridled hilarity, his laughter dies.
For a second, everything is live, humming electricity, like the moment just after thunder. Finally, Kiun says:
"Then let's go."
Except it's not in Kiun's physical voice. Take hears it as though from the space inside his own ears.
When he looks for the other boy, he sees the dragon. And just like before, when Takemikazuchi reaches for him, he feels like he's reaching for the sun.
This is how they fly: the boy without shoes on the back of the storm—the only bright space in the harsh, gray sky.