Hiyori's shoulders slumped as soon as she walked in. Ami, after shutting the door behind her, raced to the window to follow Yato's retreating figure down the street with her eyes.

"Okay," she said after a brief pause. "You did not tell us about that."

Hiyori didn't answer. Her blood coagulated with dread as she continued staring at the elegant script that curled its way across the back of the envelope in her hand.

"No," she murmured. "Please, no."

Ami tore herself away from the window. "What happened? Did you get served?"

Hiyori looked up, her expression desolate. "Worse. It's from my mom."

: : :

"Personally," said Yama, "I do not see what is so awful about having a fancy dinner with your family. Especially when they're taking you out to Moon God of all places."

Yama breathed the name of the restaurant like it was a prayer. "That's like…sushi heaven," she said reverently.

Hiyori was holding her head in both hands, her elbows on the dining room table.

"Why couldn't she just email or text me like a regular person," she moaned.

The invitation to dinner had arrived on stiff, expensive stationary where the inevitable curly words had instructed Hiyori to attend. Not requested: instructed.

"Because your mother speaks the language of the elite," Ami said comfortingly. "It can only be communicated underneath a wax seal with the appropriate coat of arms."

Hiyori lowered her head all the way down to the table, swinging her arms down on both sides of the chair.

"It's worse than that, even," she mumbled into the table. Her friends leaned in to hear better, as Hiyori, still plastered forehead-first to the table, informed them of what the conversation had been the last time she was among her extended family.

: : :

It had been several months ago, when her maternal grandparents came to stay at her parents' house over Christmas. Once her older brother, Masaomi, had showed up with his very nice, be-cardiganed boyfriend in tow, the conversation had taken an uncomfortable turn.

"So, Hiyori," her grandmother said. "It looks like you're the last!"

The older woman's tone was jovial, but Hiyori felt the skin on her arms start crawling up toward her neck like she was covered in centipedes.

"I suppose medical school does get in the way of dating," she said.

"You haven't met any…nice young doctors-to-be?" her grandmother asked, exchanging a meaningful look with Hiyori's mother.

Hiyori fought the urge to sink under her chair, hoping that if she tried hard enough she could simply pop out of existence. Instead, she sipped her champagne delicately and pondered just exactly how disowned she would be if the rest of it just happened to be splashed on her grandmother's expensive lace collar.

"You remember the Fujisaki family, don't you?" Hiyori's mother asked innocently.

Hiyori gritted her teeth until they creaked. "Yes," she said, through tight lips. "I remember them."

This champagne would definitely end up all over someone else before the night was over.

"Their son is just a few years older than you," Mrs. Iki cooed, playing a paragon of innocence. "And he's doing quite well in his profession, from what I hear. He's a doctor."

"How nice," Hiyori ground out. Her lips were stretched across her face in a taut line, but neither her grandmother nor her mother seemed to notice. She cast Masaomi a pleading glance where he sat next to his boyfriend across the room, but he just gave her a helpless shrug. She glared at him until he turned pale and looked away. Bastard. This was all his fault.

"We should invite them over sometime," Mrs. Iki continued. "I think you would get along wonderfully with—"

Hiyori set her champagne flute on the coffee table with a brittle clink. Mrs. Iki fell suddenly silent.

"Mom," she said, striving for a gentle tone. "I do not want to see Kouto Fujisaki again."

The stem of the glass complained under her grip. "I do not want to see him, ever."

Her mother and grandmother blinked at her in infuriating confusion.

"Whatever has he done, dear?" her grandmother asked.

This was the worst question of all, because Hiyori did not have a good response to it.

Kouto Fujisaki was charming, witty, and handsome. He was beloved of every mother, respected by every father. He saved kittens from trees for fun. And being around him gave Hiyori the distinct feeling that someone had just poured a bucket of eels down the back of her shirt.

She herself understood what discomforted her so much about him, but it wasn't exactly a defensible argument in this setting. For a particularly morbid school project, she had had to look up the mugshots of famous serial killers. When the look in several of their flat, dead-fish eyes had struck her as familiar, she realized she had seen that look peering out at her from Kouto Fujisaki's face. It was a stark, loathsome emptiness that made her sick to look at.

But now, she heard herself say, in defeat:

"Nothing."

Her mother and grandmother exchanged a look of triumph, and abruptly, Hiyori couldn't stand it for another second. It was no one's right to force her on Fujisaki, and she'd hate herself if she lost this most pitiful of contests.

So she sucked in a huge breath and proclaimed, in a voice ringing with victory:

"Actually, I don't want to see him, because I happen to have a boyfriend."

: : :

Ami and Yama stared blankly at Hiyori after she recounted the dismal tale.

"You don't have a boyfriend…right?" Yama asked incredulously, while Ami raised her eyebrows so sharply they could have sliced bread.

"No!" Hiyori ripped her face off the table and stared at them with a forsaken expression. "I don't! But now my entire family wants to meet the one I already told them I have!"

"Well, why don't you just tell them you broke up with him?" Ami asked, always pragmatic.

"Because they'll foist Fujisaki on me again," Hiyori said miserably.

"You could tell them you don't want to date," Yama said, drumming her fingers thoughtfully on the edge of the table.

Hiyori bestowed a bitter glare upon her. "Have you met my mother? That's tantamount to saying I don't want to eat. It's the sort of thing that in her world leads to therapy."

Yama threw her hands up in defeat. "Okay, okay."

After a few more seconds of silent deliberation, Ami pushed her chair back from the table.

"Or you could just…get a boyfriend," she said offhandedly, and disappeared into her own room. Yama followed suit, giving Hiyori a couple pats on the shoulder.

"You'll figure something out, Hiyo," she said comfortingly. Then she shrugged. "Hey, maybe Fujisaki has improved since you last saw him!"

After they had both left her alone, Hiyori sat motionless at the table for a long while, eyes frozen on her interlocked thumbs. Ami's words reverberated in her mind.

And there was a flyer on the telephone pole across the road from the kitchen window, fluttering just within her range of vision. A bold declaration was emblazoned on it, along with a phone number.

"NO PRICE TOO LOW! NO TASK TOO STEEP!"

: : :

Hiyori didn't give herself time to second-guess her decision, or reconsider the impropriety of asking a boy she barely knew to take money in exchange for pretending to date her. All she knew was that she had tipped the scale into decidedly desperate territory.

But they could help each other. She repeated this to herself, a mantra every few seconds, to keep her nerve up as she walked over to the neighboring house.

"I have a proposal," she practiced saying out loud, "that I believe can benefit both of us."

She cringed. Too formal, and a bit of a Godfather vibe. She would just have to wing it. Raising her hand, she approached the door and gave three brisk raps against it before she chickened out. A few moments later, it swung open.

Hiyori expected Yato, but the boy on the other side of the door was a head shorter, blonde, and had such an obviously impeccable sense of fashion that Hiyori instantly doubted he, Yato, and that bewildering tracksuit could share a living space.

"Hi," she said hesitantly. "I-I think I have the wrong house."

The boy's mouth fell open, and his eyes widened dramatically. They were a striking color: a luminous, golden-green that, apropos of nothing, reminded Hiyori of sweet, summer-baked gardens.

As soon as the boy realized he was staring, he shut his mouth with a snap and looked at the ground. "Hi," he said, anticlimactically. Then he extended a small hand toward her. "I'm Yukine. You're at the right house."

"Oh," Hiyori said. "Good." She shook his hand, then let go and cleared her throat.

"Um. Is Yato here?"

Yukine glanced up at her, and a mysterious expression flashed over his face before he resumed a normal smile. "Yes, he just got back from work."

He waved her inside, and Hiyori used every ounce of resolve to avoid gawking openly at the interior of the house. She peered to her right into the small kitchen, where chip bags and an alarming number of pizza boxes littered every flat service. Yukine tapped her elbow lightly, and she jumped.

"You can come in here," he said, jerking a thumb across the hallway to the small, shabby living room. Hiyori followed him in, then, at his silent invitation, seated herself on the very farthest corner of the narrow couch.

Yukine did not sit down. Instead he turned around, cupped his hands over his mouth, and hollered into the recesses of the house: "YATO, IT'S FOR YOU." Then he turned back to give her an angelic smile. She returned it, trying not to look terrified.

There was the sound of a door slamming open, of footsteps in the hallway. Hiyori clenched her fingers together. Her knuckles went white as paper, bones pressing sharply against the flesh. Now that she was inside Yato's house, sitting on his couch, her little scheme suddenly seemed childish, ludicrous, and offensive. This was rude and presumptuous. This was a mistake.

But before she could flee, Yato burst into the living room with his tracksuit half-unzipped. He tipped his head back, shoved a handful of pretzels into his mouth, and said around them:

"Whatiffit, Yukine?!"

Yukine jerked his head toward where Hiyori was self-consciously trying to sit a bit straighter on the couch. Yato's eyes fell on her, and they widened.

Hiyori would forever have a difficult time explaining why meeting Yato's gaze made her ribs feel suddenly tight—like her lungs had, for whatever reason, decided they were too big for the rest of her body. They were eyes that didn't make sense in the rest of his face, the features of which didn't necessarily abide by the rules of classic handsomeness. Even in his curiosity and confusion, Yato's eyes burned through the defensive mechanisms she had constructed around this ridiculous request. So she decided she would simply be honest.

It was a relief, Hiyori thought, to feel that she could at least do that around one person.

As she wrestled internally with this, Yato allowed half the pretzels to fall out of his mouth and onto the thinly carpeted floor.

"Hiyori?" he said incredulously. He stared at her, unaware that his shirt was covered in salty crumbs.

She stood up at once, brushing her skirt off, and squared her shoulders. She summoned every ounce of professionalism in her soul as she declared:

"Hello, Yato. I would like to hire you."

Yato held her gaze for a moment, and then a lopsided grin crept across his mouth. "So," he said. "You've come to the delivery god."

She nodded stiffly, unable to smile back as her gut gave a sudden, wrenching twist. "It's…"

She swallowed, loudly.

"It's kind of a weird job."

Yato and Yukine exchanged a quick look of apprehension. Hiyori gasped.

"I don't—I don't mean anything illegal!—it's not a hit, or anything—"

Yukine snickered loudly, and Yato scowled at him.

"Out," he ordered.

"Aww," Yukine groaned. "The first job you get that's actually interesting and I can't even listen?"

"Out." Yato turned Yukine by his shoulders and marched him into the back. Hiyori heard a door slam, and Yato returned a moment later, brushing his hands off.

"I'm not sure where that kid came from," he said, shaking his head. "Now all he does is eat pizza and give me sass."

Hiyori laughed tightly. Her hands gripped each other until her blood-starved fingertips tingled. Yato's gaze dropped to her shaking hands, then returned to her eyes.

"Is everything okay, Hiyori?" he asked. The concern in his voice was what did it.

"I need you to be my boyfriend," she burst out.

The words dropped, flat and heavy, in the immediate silence. And then Yato choked on a pretzel.

"You what?" he wheezed. He thumped a fist repeatedly to his chest, his face quickly darkening to a rich, turnip purple that Hiyori chose to assign to asphyxiation, rather than embarrassment.

"I'd like to hire you," she clarified. "To…to do that. To be my boyfriend. Temporarily." She drew a deep, shaky breath. "I may have…told my family a few things about my personal life that are not entirely accurate. It's—um."

How much, exactly, was she obligated to confide in him about her family issues? Hiyori licked her lips, miserably aware of the silence.

"That point is—I need help," she said. "And I need it soon. I understand if this is uncomfortable for you, and if you have to say no, that's fine."

The acute, awful silence dragged on for nearly a minute. Suddenly, Hiyori's stomach folded over on itself and she lurched to her feet, sick with humiliation.

"Actually, you know what?" she said. "Never mind!" She laughed crazily, wobbling on weak knees. "It's fine. I'm—I'm so sorry, this was a mistake—"

Wringing her hands, Hiyori pushed past Yato and into the narrow hallway. She was hurrying out the door when he called after her:

"I'll do it."

She stopped, one foot already on the welcome mat. Then, slowly, she turned back. Yato stood still at the entrance to the living room. There were two spots of pink high on his cheekbones, but other than that, his expression betrayed nothing.

"Sure, I'll pretend to be your boyfriend," he said. "If you need help with this, then I'm definitely not gonna leave you in the lurch. Besides,"—he flashed her a quick, subtle smile—"I'm pretty good at acting."

The confidence in his voice helped to untwist Hiyori's stomach from the writhing mess of knots it had morphed into. She stood on the welcome mat, staring speechlessly at him for several seconds.

"O-of course," she finally said. "And—I mean—I'd pay you, obviously. Um. Whatever you…you think is…"

Yato waved both his hands frantically, and she trailed off.

"We can cover that later!" he assured her. "Uh…did you want to, maybe, talk more about it, sometime? If I'm going to be your"—he coughed loudly into his fist—"your, uh, paramour, we should come up with some…some facts, right? Backstory?"

"Oh. Yes." Hiyori stepped back into the house, letting the door fall shut behind her. "We should. And…we should probably do it soon."