After Hiyori outlined the basics, he stood there for a while without saying anything, and she began to worry. It was a relatively simple plan. She wasn't sure where he could have gotten lost.
"I'm…"
Yato trailed off to pause for a long, long second.
"…Confused."
Hiyori let out a slow breath through her mouth.
"You are Yaboku, aren't you?"
He flinched.
"Technically."
"Technically?"
His eyes flashed to hers, then darted away. He seemed unable to make eye contact for longer than a few seconds.
"I prefer to be called Yato," he said quietly. "—If that's all right."
Hiyori's eyebrows rose. A nickname didn't seem appropriate for the serious god of the underworld.
But she did need him as an ally.
"Of course," she said with a smile. "Yato."
He smiled back at her. The shift in expression transformed his face into something a little breathtaking.
"Wh-what I mean is," she stumbled. Her face was turning sunrise pink.
"If—if I go with you down to the underworld, and I can prove you're not—you know." She swallowed uncomfortably.
"Then all the other gods might stop listening to Fujisaki."
She looked at him hopefully, but Yato's smile had flattened again.
"You haven't thought this through at all, have you?"
Hiyori bristled. "I have."
"First, you have no concrete reason to believe I'm not actually an ear-stealing demon god."
Yato began to tick off on his fingers with his free hand.
"Second, you're assuming once Fujisaki knows you're in the underworld, I can protect you from him. And third, the testimony of one little girl isn't going to have much effect against the superstition and prejudice of Heaven."
Hiyori's face flushed a deeper pink.
"I'm not stupid," she threw at him. "I know it's risky. But it's either this or wandering among the humans for as long as I can manage. It must be wonderful for you down in your nice, private little kingdom where you don't have to be around anyone else. It has to be inconvenient to have 'little girls' like me asking for your help."
She took a step closer, her eyes blazing, and Yato's hard expression faltered.
"As far as I can see, I have three options," Hiyori said. Her voice was low, and fearful.
"I could go back to Heaven and die. I could stay in the human world and wander until I'm forgotten and fade away. Or, I could ask for help—from someone who might actually listen."
She stopped. She held Yato's gaze for another second, then dropped her own. But not before she saw a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead.
After a few taut seconds, he sighed, and his chin dropped.
"You're sure about this?" he asked.
Hiyori gave a tight nod.
She had never been less sure about anything.
"Then…let's go."
In a silent, fluid motion, Yato raised his right arm out straight at shoulder-height. The trees around them whispered uneasily, and the hair on Hiyori's neck stood up.
"What are y—" she said, but he brought his arm down again. When he did, the ground loosened and crumbled beneath her, and she fell.
: : :
Hiyori woke up to brightness.
She blinked rapidly, her eyes stinging with the sharp radiance of the surrounding light. She squeezed them shut again. Her ears felt like someone had stuffed grass into them.
"Hiyori?" someone said from far away. She shook her head, working her jaw to ease the ache in her ears.
"Ow," she said. The light stabbed through her eyelids. "Ow."
The faraway voice said something else she couldn't understand, and the brilliance around her muted to something closer to bearable.
"Hiyori, are you all right?"
She opened her eyes, blinking away moisture until the world came into focus again. Yato's face hovered above her, his expression horrified.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry, I forgot all about the air pressure and oxygen. It's just—no one besides me ever comes here, and I'm used to it by now, and—"
"It's okay," Hiyori interrupted. "I'm fine now."
She did feel better, once the pressure in her inner ears reached equilibrium. She shifted her shoulders, and found she was lying on a hard, uneven surface. An arm—Yato's arm—was under her shoulders, lifting her.
Hiyori's ears suddenly erupted in ringing. Her body stiffened like a board. Concerned, Yato pulled her closer against him.
"You're really fine?" he asked. She barely heard him.
He smelled so marvelous. It was the same smell as before, but near, and strong, and exciting, and it woke a chaotic little voice in her that wanted.
"Are we here?" Hiyori asked stupidly. She blinked hard, leaning away from him so she wouldn't accidentally do something impolite.
Yato raised his eyebrows, but helped her sit up straight.
"Yes," he said.
Hiyori got to her feet, intensely aware of Yato's hand cupping her elbow to keep her steady. She looked around for the source of the light, which was evenly diffused and still painfully bright.
"What is…this place?" she asked. Her voice had a strange, confined resonance that made her feel like she was speaking much louder than necessary.
Yato glanced at her in bewilderment, but when he saw her awestruck expression, he understood.
Again, he almost smiled.
"This is the diamond gate."
Hiyori's eyes widened. She stared around, squinting against the light, and finally realized the dazzling space they were in was actually a colossal, domed chamber that rivaled the Heavenly throne room in size. She still didn't understand why it was so bright.
Then her eyes fully adjusted.
"Oh," she choked.
She was among stars: a hundred billion of them in an underground galaxy. Every inch of the curving walls was stuffed with diamonds—winking and dazzling and glinting in hundreds of fiery colors.
"The diamond gate," she repeated in disbelief.
Yato let go of her elbow and began walking toward the far wall, his sandals crunching over the gems. Hiyori followed, at first trying to avoid stepping on the priceless carpet beneath her feet, but abandoning her efforts once she realized how long it would take her to dance across the sparkling floor. She trotted to keep up, and saw they were headed toward a narrow, dark archway where the diamond wall curved to meet the floor.
When they reached it, Yato paused, and Hiyori stopped next to him. A low rumble emanated from the archway, raising the hairs along her arms.
"What's in there?" she asked.
"Something that prefers to be left alone," Yato said.
Hiyori cast him a sideways glance, but his mouth was shut as tight as a trap.
"Stay on this side of me," he said, and he led her into the darkness.
The rumbling grew louder. With it came a soft whistling that reminded Hiyori of wind through a cracked doorway. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the dimness as they walked.
The dark tunnel expanded, opening into another large chamber. Out of multiple archways in the stone wall gurgled wide, inky rivers, each flowing silently through the middle of the room and out again through different archways. The air in this place was cool and restless, and it whispered through Hiyori's hair like voices. Without meaning to, she edged closer to Yato.
"The room of rivers," he said, before she could ask.
He led her away from the silent, flowing water and along a narrow path against the wall. The path began to widen as they walked, and the low rumbling was growing louder still. In the shadows in front of her, Hiyori saw a huge, pitch-colored mass huddled against the wall.
Suddenly, the rumbling stopped. So did Yato.
Then there was that mysterious whistling noise again. The hair on Hiyori's face flew back as an enormous gust of rank air blew past them. The black mass stirred, another thunderous snore beginning deep in its throat.
"Yato," Hiyori whispered. "Is that—"
"Shh!" His hand flew out, cutting her off.
The rumbling faltered. Stopped. Hiyori held her breath, long enough to go lightheaded.
Then the rumbling started up again, fouler and noisier than before, and her knees nearly weakened in relief.
Yato's plan was obviously to sneak her past the beast without waking it up. They tiptoed closer, Hiyori hugging the wall while Yato kept himself carefully angled between her and the sleeping monster. They edged their way along, until quite suddenly, Hiyori saw a low, gated passage looming before them that had previously been invisible in the soft light.
The creature's snores rumbled through the ground, traveling under Hiyori's feet and making the hinges of the gate chatter like teeth. Yato moved past her, reaching his hand out to touch one of the bars. As soon as his hand made contact, chains began to retract from the gate, snaking from between the bars with a muted clinking. Hiyori cast a nervous glance over her shoulder at the snoring animal.
"Ah—not now," Yato muttered desperately. Hiyori turned back to him. The chains were still unslinking from the gate, but beyond it, in the darkness of the passage, a light was growing.
"What's that?" she whispered. Yato just shook his head, wiping a bead of sweat off his temple as he gave the gate a small shake. Hiyori peered at the light through the gate. As it grew, she could see it swinging, bobbing along in the darkness as its invisible carrier moved toward them.
And then:
"YATO!"
Hiyori cringed away from the enraged shout, stumbling back a step before Yato caught her by the arm. She squinted at the light, trying to make out a figure next to it. The lantern flickered a cheerful butter yellow—very different from the eerie blue of the Diogenes lantern Yato had carried. The person carrying it was short, but still moved quickly toward them.
"Yukine," Yato hissed through his teeth. "Let me in."
The lantern-carrier walked right up to the gate and raised the light. His face was illuminated by the glow of it, and Hiyori saw round, young cheeks, large honey-gold eyes, and a sprinkling of freckles. The righteous fury blazing from his face made her sincerely grateful it did not seem to be directed at her.
Yato met the boy with a baleful glare through the gate, but he didn't back down. After a few moments of profoundly uncomfortable silence, Yukine exploded:
"If you like wandering around upstairs so much, then why don't you just stay there?" he spat at Yato.
"I was ju—" Yato began.
"After all, who wants to be stuck here with all the dead people?!" Yukine bellowed. Yato shot something back at him in a low, angry voice—but Hiyori didn't hear it. The rumbling under her feet had stopped.
Which meant the beast behind them was no longer snoring.
"You know what? It's fine," Yukine said. His voice was quieter, but his eyebrows twitched and his lip had a nasty curl. "I understand. Why bother to do your work when you can just leave it all to us? It's not like I've got hobbies."
Yato was audibly grinding his teeth together. He cast a nervous glance over his shoulder, meeting Hiyori's eyes as he did.
"Yukine," he growled. "Let us in. Now."
Yukine's mouth opened, then shut.
"Us?" he whispered. Slowly, his eyes traveled over to Hiyori. She waved.
"Hello!"
: : :
Once Yukine opened the gate for them, and they had—however temporarily—forestalled gruesome death at the mercy of a terrible shadow-creature, they had walked down the passageway until it spilled them onto the lip of a cliff.
And beyond the cliff was a universe.
The domed ceiling disappeared above Hiyori's head into an abyss of velvety black, a patchwork of frozen constellations staring down from the distant ceiling. These unfamiliar stars winked at her from a maze of galactic eddies so far above her head that it dizzied her.
She looked down again, past the lip of the cliff, and the dizziness did not fade.
The space of the cavern was almost incomprehensible. Hiyori realized instantly that the mountain of the gods could fit easily inside it. Twice.
The cavern floor stretched beyond sight, and was divided into distinct regions by wide black rivers that poured endlessly from the walls. Hiyori looked down at the nearest region, which was the size of an entire city in itself. Beautiful houses clustered around bright gardens, and Hiyori could see orchards, vineyards, lakes and waterfalls that sparkled sapphire blue despite the absence of sky.
"What…" she breathed. "Is that?"
Yukine leaned recklessly over the cliff to see what she was referring to.
"Elysium," he said in a casual tone.
"Oh," she responded in a numb whisper.
The three of them began to walk along the cliffside. Yukine took the lead, casting a suspicious glance at Hiyori before putting as much space between himself and her as possible. Yato stayed on her left side. He did not speak to her.
"It's big," Hiyori said, still reeling from the view of the clifftop.
"Yes," Yato answered.
She paused before making her next observation.
"And it's…full of…?"
"The dead, yes."
Hiyori winced at the note of defensiveness in his voice, and glanced over at him. Yato's mouth was locked shut again, and he stared straight ahead as he walked. He wasn't outpacing her, though. He obviously wanted to stay nearby, but talking to her was not in the cards.
"He said something about you wandering around 'upstairs'," she said, hesitantly. "Does he mean…outside?"
Out of the corner of her eye, Yato's whole body seemed to tense.
"Yes."
"Are you not supposed to be 'upstairs'?"
Yato's pace quickened.
"Do you get tired of asking intrusive questions?" he snapped. His voice was so completely bereft of the bashful consideration she had almost come to expect from him, that Hiyori knew she must have hit a nerve. Her throat suddenly felt like it had closed off.
"I'm not—I was just—"
As quickly as Yato had sped up, he stopped again, and Hiyori nearly slammed into his back. He turned on her, eyes blazing, and she gasped aloud at the sensation of being submerged in icy water.
"I thought you learned the kind of trouble curiosity can land you in," he said.
And then he turned around and kept walking. This time, he didn't wait for her.
It occurred to Hiyori that he might be like one of the stars on the cavern ceiling: cold, and secretive, and sorely out of reach.