Author's note: Hello! I started writing this a long time ago, and then I figured I'd better finish it before Final Remix comes out and contradicts all my headcanon (probably too late, that's in five days. And I don't have and can't afford a Switch. I'm sad about it. Oh well.)

Anyway, this is just going to be loosely-connected scenes showing the relationship between Joshua and Hanekoma. I've taken quite a few liberties with the previous "Composer", how each game differs with each composer, how Producers work, and other things. Even though a lot of my headcanon is a bit strange, I hope you enjoy the story.

Trigger warning: contains themes of suicide in later chapters

i

It was a slow day today, both in terms of the Game and café business, but the Author of Shibuya wanted Sanae to stick around. She didn't like him to go home during Games, not even when the amount of Players had dwindled down to a number she could easily keep track of herself, because she didn't like too much flickering between planes. It made it difficult for her to see, she said. Her clairvoyance was centered on the Game, and extended to the lower planes only at the points where they intersected. The Author couldn't see the Higher Plane at all, and when he raised his vibe high enough to enter it, she couldn't see him. When he was in the Higher Plane she never knew when he would return, inevitably throwing off the cadence of the city when he did. Her Game was too delicate for that. Shibuya was a city that needed to be handled with precision; even the chaotic parts had been drawn that way intentionally. But there was a difference between a few exaggeratedly-bold strokes, and entire radicals appearing where they shouldn't have been. That was how she explained it to him, anyway – and though he wasn't enough of a calligrapher to see it the same way she did, he knew she had her reasons. "Shibuya's Soul is too strong and rebellious," she had explained over tea, decades ago, back when he was new to this and still getting homesick. "If my fingers make even the slightest of slips, the brush will slide in the wrong direction. You're an artist, so I'm sure you understand."

He understood well enough to respect her orders. He didn't have as much freedom as he would've liked, and he felt a bit isolated sometimes, as the only Angel in this plane of solitary souls, but it wasn't so bad. Shibuya was an interesting place, and there were plenty of interesting inhabitants to interact with.

Human or otherwise.

"Hey there, Marshmallow," he greeted, as the fluffy, rather large white cat slinked towards him. She mewed in response and brushed against his legs. He crouched down and she climbed onto his lap, digging her claws into his legs. "Brought somethin' for ya."

As if she understood him, the cat placed her front paws on his chest and poked her head into the plastic bag holding the food, so he dumped the bouillabaisse soup on the ground. Keeping her paws planted on his lap, the cat lowered her head to slowly lap it up. She didn't get fed bouillabaisse often, unless a customer didn't finish theirs. Usually he just fed the strays whatever baked goods had been out for more than a couple of days, but he was willing to be a bit more generous when they were pregnant.

"Can't be more than a couple of weeks now, can it?" he said to the cat, stroking her head. Not all cats would tolerate him trying to pet them while they were eating, but Marshmallow had been familiar with him since she was a kitten, and didn't react. A few months ago, Marshmallow's mother – Dusty, he'd called her, because of her gray coat – had been nesting in the same little corner between the power box and the fence, obscured by the stack of cardboard boxes piled nearby. But Dusty, like all stray cats eventually do, had disappeared, leaving her litter behind. Eventually Marshmallow, territorial as she was, had chased off all her littermates and most of the other strays that lived in the alley next to WildKat. Some of them still showed up around other parts of the neighborhood. Some of them didn't. Marshmallow was the only one who he could count on seeing around on a daily basis, at least for now.

As the cat lapped up the soup, Sanae took a moment to appreciate the scenery. The faintest tinges of pink were beginning to frame the clouds, and the cool breeze brushing past his skin signified the arrival of evening. A couple teenage girls were chattering frantically in the distance. Curious as he was, he couldn't help but listen in on their conversation.

"I don't understand! How are we supposed to use this thing?"

"I told you! Just point it at him and push the button!"

"Yeah, but how come the only thing we're allowed to say is 'koto'? Can't we say something else?"

"Just press it!"

…And it was a good thing he'd decided to keep an ear on this discussion. He could help them out, if necessary. He wasn't allowed to give too many hints about the mission, but he could give tips if there were technical difficulties.

"How come it's not working?"

"I dunno. Do you think he can hear it?"

"Well, he's not doing anything!"

"I think he has a guitar or something. I don't think that's a koto."

"Of course it's not, but what are we supposed to do about that!? If I could make him think about the guitar I would, but the only thing we can imprint is 'koto' because this stupid pager isn't working!" Peeking through a crack in the fence, he matched the voices to a pair of girls in white kimonos, one of whom was mashing buttons frantically while pointing the pager at a slightly younger boy who was walking a few steps ahead of them.

"Maybe you're supposed to, like, push it against his head or something," the calmer one suggested.

"Noo!" the other girl shrieked. Her protest was accompanied by another round of rapid button mashing. "That is the stupidest idea I've ever heard of! Don't you know anything about pagers? You're supposed to – "

"Will you stop that?" the younger boy snapped, pivoting around to face straight towards the Players.

The girls gasped. Sanae raised his eyebrows and looked closer.

"Oh my god! You can see us?"

"Are you a Player, too?"

A huff. "If I was a Player, you wouldn't have been able to mentally bombard me with the word 'koto' over the past ten minutes. As it is, I assure you I've received your imprint loud and clear, so will you please do me a favor and find someone else to bother?"

"Ummm…"

"Oh…"

A few moments of stunned silence. Sanae probably would have been in stunned silence, too. Obviously, this child was alive. Obviously, he was communicating with the Players. Had he been mistuned? It happened sometimes; people's vibes ended up a bit higher than usual and they saw things they weren't supposed to see. But this rarely extended further than the Noise Plane, and it rarely resulted in more than brief glimpses. Things people could pass off as figments of their own imaginations.

Most unusually, this boy not only saw the Players but seemed to know exactly what was going on. He stared, sternly, at the paired Players before sighing, extending a hand, and saying, "Oh, all right. Let me see your mission."

"Umm… okay," said one of the girls, as she extended her own hands towards the boy. Sanae didn't have to use his second sight to know what the boy would see: "Fill the lonely hearts, of cold Miyashita Park, with warm melodies." Not the Author's greatest work, but it was functional. Enough symbolic clichés to clue them into the mission without making it too obvious.

"Hmmm," said the boy. "Let's see... taiko, enka, concert, spring, ticket, Kawano Shiori. Any of that do anything?"

To the surprise of the Players, but evidently not to the boy, the pagers beeped. "Hey, look," said one of the girls. "There are other words now."

"Yeah," said the other girl, "but what do we do with it?"

"Imprint them, of course," said the boy. "But not on me. I have better things to do than listen to mediocre enka music."

The players did not respond to this.

"Have you not figured it out yet? The mission. They want you to get people to buy tickets to the concert happening tomorrow. Kawano Shiori, upcoming local star who would not be nearly as successful if Shibuya's boss wasn't so inexplicably dead-set on pushing her on everyone, will be holding a spring concert. There are ads all over the windows in that café, you know." The pagers beeped either for 'café' or 'window': the Players were supposed to pick up the surplus posters from WildKat and plaster them in windows throughout the rest of the city, though none seemed to have figured that out yet. "You should really be paying more attention to these things, you know. You're Players. Jumping into things without looking for clues could cost you your existences."

A brief pause, followed by a dubious "How in the world did you know about that?" which was cut off by the other girl saying, "We'll try to do that. Thank you! Thank you so, so much!" The other girl murmured her reluctant agreement.

"You can thank me by learning the difference between the guitar and the violin." The boy dismissed them with a wave and they ran off, glancing at the ticking timers on their hands as they did so.

It was probably about time for Sanae to make his entrance.

"Hey!" he called out. The cat jumped off his lap and scurried away as he stood to wave at the boy. "You there!"

The boy jumped at the sound of his voice; he clearly hadn't counted on the presence of other people when deciding to speak to the Players. But he quickly removed the startled expression from his face and flashed a smooth smile, like he knew something Sanae didn't. "Yes, Mister?"

Sanae dusted off his pants, took just a step closer to the boy. He wasn't sure where to go with this, and he was sure it showed on the slightly awkward, but hopefully disarming smile on his face. "That was an interesting conversation I just witnessed, kid."

"Thank you," said the boy, smile unwavering. "I'm an actor, you see. I was practicing for a play."

"…Right," said Sanae, and he realized the kid thought he was from the living world. Which made sense, he supposed, looking at it from the kid's point of view. No one but the Author knew who he really was, and he was clearly lacking the wings that would mark him as a Reaper - or the panic that would mark him as a Player. As an Angel, Sanae could easily read people's vibe wavelengths to determine which plane they were native to, but it was possible that this child could see into the UG without seeing any of the mechanisms behind it. "Those two young ladies your co-actors? They're pretty good at actin' like scared Players."

He expected to see some embarrassment in response to that (he had just called him out on a lie, after all), or maybe some intimidation. Instead the boy's eyebrows merely rose in curiosity, and he tilted his head to one side. "You're a Reaper?"

"Not quite," Sanae said. He liked to avoid lying if he could, but he wasn't sure how to answer this question honestly without giving away classified information.

"Suicidal Player?" asked the boy. 'Suicidal' being the boy's attempt at explaining why he didn't have a partner with him, though it failed to explain why he was addressing the boy in the first place.

"No to both," said Sanae, with a smile.

The boy thought for a minute, looking him up and down, but saying nothing.

"You heard of the Author of Shibuya, kid?" Sanae asked.

The boy's eyes widened a bit; he opened his mouth but did not answer. A reaction like that made it clear that he had heard of the Author, and that he was aware of both her power and the secrecy of her identity. Sanae chuckled a bit, raising a hand to the back of his neck. "Relax, kid. I ain't them. Only brought it up 'cause you seemed to be wonderin' about whether or not you should ask."

The boy frowned; he seemed displeased, but Sanae couldn't tell if that was because he'd been caught off-guard or because Sanae had read his body language. Humans all had their strange habits, but they usually weren't too difficult to analyze, once you learned what kinds of questions to ask. Of course, some people disliked being read more than others.

"You're on the same… same ground as me," said the boy.

"Yep," said Sanae. Which technically wasn't a lie. He wasn't from the plane of the living, but he was tuned into it, currently.

"You can see it too?" the boy asked. "The… Game?"

"Sure can."

The kid stared at him for a moment, evaluating him with eyes that had been trained to absorb without reflecting. This boy did not like to show his emotions; an apathetic frown was held steady on his face. But Sanae could tell by the way his brow perked up, and how his shoulders relaxed, and the way he leaned towards Sanae ever so slightly, that Sanae had caught his attention.

It wasn't so hard to figure out what humans wanted to hear; even the guarded ones like this boy. You just had to see what they didn't want to hear, and guess from there. The boy had revealed what he hadn't wanted to hear by his alarmed reaction to being seen speaking to Players. There were only so many underlying causes that could be behind that particular brand of self-consciousness.

"How long have you seen it?" the boy asked.

"Since I moved out here, I guess." It wasn't really a lie – Games could be observed from the Higher Plane, with effort, but Sanae had rarely observed them before taking on his job as a Producer. He definitely hadn't observed Shibuya's particular Game before he'd been assigned there.

"You don't see the Games in the other cities?"

So it looked like this boy knew that this didn't only happen in Shibuya. Sanae shrugged. "Bits and pieces, here and there. I saw some things sometimes, but never really put it together. Wasn't 'til I set up shop here that I started getting privy to all the details." That was pretty much a lie. Now he'd have to think up an explanation for it.

"You own this coffee shop?" the boy asked, finally removing his gaze from Sanae and turning a critical eye to the café windows, where the concert advertisement posters were hanging. His lips curled in disapproval. "You like Kawano Shiori."

Sanae laughed; the child hadn't even tried to hide the accusing tone in his voice. "It's called sponsorship, kiddo. I get money for letting people put ads in my shop." He decided against mentioning his actual opinion of the singer; he did like her, but music wasn't his area of expertise, and he was beginning to get the feeling that this boy wouldn't have much respect for opinions that differed from his own. "Say, why don't you come in for a minute? There are no other customers at the moment, and, well… this isn't generally the kind of thing I talk about out in the open."

The boy seemed to hesitate for a second, but after glancing at his watch he nodded and followed Sanae into the WildKat Café. "Mother will want me back by seven," he said. He stood in place by the entrance, glancing around the premises. "But I suppose I can talk for a little while."

Sanae went behind the counter to turn the coffee machine back on, if only to give himself something to do with his hands while they were talking. Might as well have a something to drink; his caffeine tolerance was so high it wouldn't be much of a problem to have a cup of coffee in the evening. Angels didn't need much sleep anyway. He looked back towards the boy, who had plopped down on one of the stools by the bar and set his violin on the countertop. "Coffee?" he offered.

The boy glanced up at the menu for a minute, then shrugged. "Why not?"

"Could take a minute," he said, retrieving the beans from the pantry. "I've already closed up shop for the day."

The boy nodded. Sanae turned his back to fill the grinder with roasted beans; he could feel the boy's curious eyes on him as he worked. "Got a name?" he called over the buzz.

"Kiryu Yoshiya," the boy said. "Friends and family call me Joshua."

"Joshua," Sanae repeated. "You Christian?"

"More or less."

Sanae chuckled a bit at what was essentially a concise summation of modern attitudes to religion in general. "More or less, huh?"

"I like the name. It suits me." The boy – Joshua – shifted in his seat. "I thought we were going to talk about the Game."

"…Right." Sanae paused the conversation for a few seconds to put the ground beans and the water into the drip machine, before turning back around to face the boy. "I'm Hanekoma Sanae, by the way. Nice to meet you, too."

Joshua said nothing in response to this.

Sanae sighed; capturing this boy's interest hadn't been too hard, but it seemed it would be a bit more challenging to win his respect. "So…" he said. "How long have you been seeing the Game?"

"Forever," said the boy. "Well… it was mostly the Noise at first. Sometime after I started school I started seeing… everything else."

That was surprising. He would've thought the Author of Shibuya would have known about this kind of anomaly, if it had been going on so long. Of course, he couldn't say that to the boy, so he questioned something else. "Noise?"

"…I mean Smears," he said, sinking into his seat. "Noise was what I used to call them, before I knew what they were. That word for them keeps popping into my head."

"Noise, huh?" Sanae repeated. "Interesting."

"But that's not important," Joshua said, shaking his head as if to shake the topic out of the way. "What do you know? Are there others like us?"

"Not that I've met," said Sanae. "I mean… I'm sure there are people who see little things from time to time, but I've never met another person who could see the Game their whole life. …You are alive, aren't ya?" It wasn't a particularly funny thing to say, but he laughed a bit anyway, just so the boy would know he wasn't serious.

"If I was a Player," the boy pointed out, "I would have completed the mission by now."

Sanae didn't call him out on the arrogance. "Right. You seem to know a lot – you knew just what to do to help those two girls."

"It's not like it's hard to figure out. The posters are all over the city. You'd have to be an idiot not to notice."

"Or someone who doesn't know what they're looking for," Sanae said fairly.

"What about you, then? Can you solve the missions?"

"I solve them occasionally, yeah. Don't wanna risk being too helpful to the Players, though. I've heard the Author isn't too fond of people who mess with her Game." Hopefully the boy would take that as a warning and not a threat.

"And you know this how?" The boy's eyes focused on Sanae, and Sanae knew he wouldn't be able to get away with withholding information for much longer without the boy getting suspicious.

Sanae shrugged. "Same way as you know how to solve the Missions, I guess – listening to what Reapers and Players have to say."

The boy didn't respond right away, and Sanae figured now was as good a time as any to take the coffee from the drip machine – maybe it would be a little weak, but he needed a chance to pause and think of a story, and he doubted this child was much of a coffee connoisseur. He took the cream out of the fridge and the sugar out of the pantry, and poured a liberal serving of both into the boy's cup before filling his own. "Here," he said. He passed the boy his coffee across the counter before walking around and sitting down two seats away from Joshua's stool. "I guess I should tell you the story of how I found out about all this stuff." He took a swig of coffee, temperature be darned, before he continued. "It's been about… what, almost twenty years now?"

That got the boy's attention; he looked up at him, eyes peering through the steam rising from his coffee cup. It had actually been much longer since he'd come to Shibuya, but he doubted the boy would believe he moved to Shibuya to start his own business as a teenager, and he knew he couldn't pass for much older than forty. At the same time, he wanted the boy to know that he was knowledgeable, and he couldn't think of a way to convey that other than to let him know he'd been following the Game longer than the kid had been alive. Even if he had to lie about the specifics.

"Anyway," he continued, "this café is… a little special. …Have the Reapers told you anything about where the Game takes place?"

"It's still Shibuya," said the boy, "just a different… plane, right? I used to call it the Shibuya Underground… because it was like all this activity happening right under everyone's noses, but they couldn't see it."

It was technically higher in vibe than the plane of the living, but that was a fair enough term for it. "…Right. It's a different plane. You got a word for the plane we're on?"

The boy hesitated for a second, and after taking a small sip of his coffee, said, "The… Real Ground. That's what I used to call it."

Which would imply that he used to think that the "Underground" wasn't real. Which certainly supported Sanae's earlier hypothesis about why the boy was not happy being seen talking to Players.

"Hmmm…" said Sanae. "That works. Anyway… this café is only place in Shibuya where the 'Underground' and the 'Realground' intersect."

The boy tilted his head. "Intersect?"

"Meaning what you see in the Real Ground is exactly what you see in the Underground. When Players come into this shop, everyone can see them."

The boy's head shot up; that had certainly captured his interest, and Sanae hadn't even had to lie this time. Part of the point of being Producer was to learn to understand life as well as death, and he couldn't do that if he couldn't speak to both the living and the dead. So, with the Author's permission, he had painted a sigil on his shop which would lower the vibes of anyone entering it down to the RG level. It kept out Smears, too. "Of course, the Reapers don't generally advertise this to the Players – even the Reapers aren't supposed to know about it, really. Too many of them would take advantage. But some of Reapers figured out that they could come here while they were supposed to be on-duty, and I started noticing I was getting a lot of business from some pretty strange people. So I started talkin' to 'em."

"And they told you about the Game?" asked the boy.

He shrugged. "Not outright, usually, but I picked up on some things. And I guess spending too much time in the café had some kind of an effect on me, so after a while I could see the Game in the other parts of Shibuya, too." He hoped that would be believable. He didn't like lying, but he didn't have any other way of explaining himself to the boy without revealing his role in it all. Which he really wasn't supposed to do.

The boy took a sip from his coffee, an obvious excuse to pause and think before he spoke. "I see," he finally said.

It looked like he believed the lie, at least. Not that he would have had much of a reason not to, probably – the kid probably didn't have the slightest idea of why he himself could see the Game, so why wouldn't he believe Sanae's explanation? It was nonsensical to anyone who understood how vibes and planes worked, but this kid didn't seem to know anything more about that than the average Reaper.

"I've always known about the Game," said the boy. "I used to think it was common knowledge that sometimes people just – disappeared in the middle of the street. It must have been startling for someone like you to witness it for the first time." He giggled, cupping his hand over his mouth politely.

"Sure was," said Sanae, smiling just enough to humor the kid. "Luckily by then I'd heard enough from the Reapers to know who to go to with my questions."

"They never speak to me," Joshua said. He stared absently at his coffee cup for a moment before his eyes flickered into focus and he turned back to Sanae. "Do you think if someone else went to this café a lot, they'd start seeing the Game, too?"

And that was why Sanae didn't like lying; people always pried in ways he didn't anticipate. He put a hand behind his neck and chuckled a bit. "It would have to be quite a bit of time," he said. "I do have regulars, and as far as I know none of them see anything out of the ordinary. Besides, I did see little glimpses of the Game even before I came here. Not sure if your average Joe can do that, so maybe it's some kind of natural potential I had in the first place, and being in this place just brought it out."

"Oh." Joshua slouched back against the bar, drumming his fingers across his coffee cup for a few seconds before looking back at Sanae and asking, "What kinds of glimpses?"

"Oh, you know. Sometimes I saw glimpses of monsters – Smears, I mean, but they're not called that in every town – but I figured they were just my imagination. Saw a few Reapers, too, but I always figured the wings were just decoration."

"I see." Joshua pressed his coffee cup up against his lips, not quite managing to conceal the grin twitching on the corners of his mouth. His gaze was fixed straight ahead, but the crinkles in his eyelids and slope of his brow revealed his eager curiosity. Sanae had better change the subject before the boy risked asking a question that Sanae's creativity couldn't keep up with. Besides, he'd invited him in to get information, not to impress him with stories.

"Say, how old are you anyway?" asked Sanae.

He glanced back, and hesitated a moment before answering. "Twelve," he finally said, still looking at Sanae as if awaiting a justification for the question.

"And you say you've been seeing the Game – this Game, Shibuya's Game – your whole life?"

"Of course I have," the boy said. "I was born in Shibuya, you know." He said that like it should have somehow been obvious.

"Hmm," said Sanae. An anomaly like this had been in Shibuya for twelve years and the Author didn't seem aware of it. That was strange.

"Why are you asking?" asked the boy, looking Sanae in the eye with a strange sort of sternness. …Sanae had been assuming the boy had been telling the truth, mostly because he couldn't think of a real reason to lie; but he supposed he couldn't just take the kid's word on something so difficult to believe. He'd have to scan.

"Ah, no reason," he said. His voice trailed off at the end as he switched his focus from what he could see with his physical eyes to the level of existence beyond that – vibes and Soul and Imagination. The boy's Soul was vibrant and unusually diverse – which could explain why he could see what he did. …The boy could apparently notice when he was being imprinted on, so Sanae probably shouldn't risk sending him any messages to prompt him to think about what he wanted to know, but he shouldn't realize he was being scanned. Sanae let his Imagination flow out from his own body, tugging at the membrane of Soul encircling the boy's thoughts –

And the Soul snapped back like a rubber band, repelling him forcefully. Startled, Sanae tuned his focus back into the physical world to find the boy was staring at him bewilderedly. For a moment he thought the boy must have somehow noticed him prying before he realized he had visibly flinched.

"Ah – sorry," Sanae said. "Had a twitch in my head. Too much caffeine, I guess." So, the kid had a block over his thoughts. They weren't terribly uncommon, especially in more guarded personalities, but they were usually easier to bypass than that. It was strange; normally people who couldn't be scanned couldn't be imprinted on, either. This kid was just all kinds of unusual, wasn't he?

"Right…" said the boy, glancing first at his half-empty coffee cup and then at his wrist, upon which was a golden watch, unusually nice-looking to be owned by a preteen boy. "…I should probably go now. It'll start to get dark soon."

"Right," said Sanae.

The boy didn't break eye contact as he slinked off the stool and got his violin case down from the counter. He was moving a little bit slowly for someone in a hurry to get home, and Sanae realized he was waiting to see just how interested Sanae was in continuing to speak to him.

…Which might be a problem. The boy had upped his defenses, just slightly but perceptibly, when Sanae had asked his age. Meaning too much interest might make him suspicious. On the other hand, he wanted the kid to know that he was welcome back. That he was wanted back.

"Got 520 yen?" Sanae asked.

"What?"

Sanae gestured towards the coffee, then nodded towards the price list behind the counter.

"You're charging me for this?" the boy looked at his coffee distastefully. "It's weak, and too sweet. It tastes like boiling sugar water."

Sanae chuckled a bit at that; apparently the kid was a bit more of a coffee connoisseur than he'd thought. He should've known not to let the quality slip just because he was dealing with a kid. "I'll gladly remake it for you, but first you gotta pay."

The boy scowled – well, it was more like a pout, on his childlike face – as he dug in his pockets for change. "I don't have any money on hand," he said. "You should have told me the cost ahead of time."

"It's on the menu back there," Sanae said, smiling. "But hey, don't worry about it – you can bring me the money tomorrow. I won't even charge you interest. Deal?"

"How generous," Joshua said sarcastically. He was still pouting. "Fine. I'll pay you later." With that, he hoisted his violin up and turned to leave the café.

"Nice meeting you, Joshua," Sanae called out after him, cheerfully, as the doors swung shut behind him.

Well, that had gone well enough, he thought, as he picked up a stack of concert posters. It was about time for him to close up shop, but he should leave the posters outside, so the Players could get to them later. He was interested in finding out more information on this boy. The child didn't seem to know what to think about Sanae – he was interested, that was for sure, but slightly suspicious, and definitely not pleased about having to pay for the coffee. But at least he'd be back.

For now, though, Sanae would have to report this to the Author.

"So, you've met the Kiryu boy," said the Author. She was sitting in seiza position at the low table, sipping at her tea, her femininity and elegance accented by her radiating form.

Sanae took the seat opposite her, giving a slight bow of both greeting and thanks as she procured a cup of tea for him. "So you do know about him." He wasn't too surprised. Not much in Shibuya got past the Author. "If you don't mind me asking, why didn't you bring it up before?"

"I never saw a reason to. There are anomalies in every population, every imaginable sort – but in the end it's not the anomalies, that create true beauty, but the less striking individuals, pieced together to make a whole." She smiled good-naturedly. "Of course, I can tell from your art that your philosophy isn't quite the same as mine. But I digress. I've known about Kiryu for quite some time. He's quite the nuisance – has a habit of trying to manipulate my Game from the outside. At first, the worst he did was pester my Reapers for information, but it seems the more he sates his curiosity, the less satisfied he becomes with how I run things."

"So he's a problem?" Sanae asked cautiously. "Problem" being a euphemism for "target to be eliminated."

"Yes," said the Author, "but there isn't anything to be done about it. He's in the world of the living, and I don't get to decide what happens to those Souls – not unless I have to. And I don't have to, in peaceful times like this. My own annoyance is not sufficient cause to meddle with another world… though I do wish he'd show my world the same courtesy."

"You want me to talk to him? Tell him to leave the Players alone?"

"You can try, but I think he does what he wants." She smiled good-humoredly. "Not even imprinting phases him much."

"So. No action to be taken, then?" asked Sanae.

The Author put down her tea cup and looked Sanae in the eye – her own eyes were nothing but shadows contrasting the rest of her bright silhouette, but Sanae was familiar with them. He'd learned her body language well enough to see the tinges of affection in the piercing stare and the upward crinkle of her lips, further creasing her wrinkled face. "Sanae. Haven't you heard that curiosity killed the cat?" She shook her head in mock-exasperation. "No, Sanae, no further action is required, but you are welcome to converse with the boy if you see fit. I do believe that interacting with the living was part of your reason for coming here, was it not? Study him as much as you want. Just don't tell him anything he doesn't already know."

"…Yes, ma'am," Sanae smiled, a bit sheepishly. The Author had always teased him for his habit of taking interest in particular humans – Producers were supposed to care about humanity, but forming relationships with individuals was strange, and so was Sanae's habit of seeking out people who were unusual in some way and talking to them until he found out what made them so. Angels valued people for their similarities, not their differences. District monarchs usually shared a similar mentality – especially those who had seen as much bloodshed as the Author had. Sanae supposed it was comforting for them, to always remind themselves that death gave way to new life, that those who no longer existed visibly could be recoded and recycled into similar beings with similar roles. But Sanae didn't have the same worldview. Sure, he couldn't preserve any individual forever, but there was no reason not to enjoy their company while they were there.

"He lives in the Shoto area, if you're curious," said the Author, referring to Sanae's Second Sight. "I've… seen him die. My clairvoyance tells me what happens when he enters the Plane of the Dead, but nothing after."

"Oh," said Sanae. It was a warning – don't get attached, because he'd die, and she couldn't guarantee he'd exist long after that.

"His Imagination is quite high. He's got a striking Soul – elegant, but bold."

"I could see that," said Sanae, remembering the vibrant walls hiding the boy's thoughts.

With one final sip of tea, the Author set her cup down and smiled widely. "The week he dies – that, Sanae, will surely be an interesting Game."