Yato watches Yukine closely. He's sure this will be the tipping point for his shinki—he's already been edgy and aloof for some time. Surely, surely, the foolhardiness—the sheer, unmitigated idiocy—of going up alone against the heavenly forces will be too much for him.
After a few tense seconds, Yukine's mouth flattens into a line. He turns around to fully face where Yato still leans against the wall. The hardened, adult expression on his face looks incorrect on such young features.
"I promised didn't I?"
Yato stares.
"You're not going to do anything that stupid unless I'm there to protect you. Besides—"
Yukine looks down at the little business card clenched in his fist. The writing left on it is a bit smeared: one teardrop's worth of moisture.
"I…want to do it. She's gone. I want to—to hurt them a lot. For that."
/
Some time later, they go to her funeral; Yato doesn't remember how he ended up there, or what day it is, or why he's at a funeral for someone who is absolutely not dead. There's some talking. Some crying. There are photos of her that he won't look at—he hasn't let himself see an image of her face, since…
"Yukine. Why are we here?"
Yukine glances at him, forehead creasing in small wrinkles.
"You said we had to. You don't remember?"
Should he? His thoughts feel like smoky arms, gripping him with amorphous limbs that dissolve as soon as they find purchase.
"Oh…yeah. Yeah, I do."
Yukine keeps shooting sideways glances at him until Yato grits his teeth in sudden, violent annoyance.
"What?! What is it—what did I say wrong?"
Even though they're sitting in the very back—and they're invisible to nearly everyone there—his sudden volume prompts a few heads to turn. Yukine slides down in his seat, looking mortified. He whispers:
"You said it yourself. We had to come, because funerals are like breeding grounds for ayakashi."
That's right. Yato remembers now. His job is to fight them…for some reason. But—
What if one of them is her.
They haven't fought any ayakashi—not since Hiyori did what she did. Yato has seen them, more of them recently: regrouping, clustering and feeding on the pockets of depression and anxiety that still thrive. They have always found nooks and corners to wait out the storms. He used to regard those debased creatures with a sort of distant superiority: phantoms have always been phantoms. Gods have always been gods.
But now, he finds himself searching for her face in their twisting features, her voice in the noise of their hunger, for any part of her that could still whisper, good smell, please come closer—you smell—NICE.
"…Yato? H-hey!"
Yukine shakes his sleeve a bit, and he looks more worried now. Yato's jaw aches; he's been clenching it, and then he tastes blood—from his tongue, probably.
He looks down at the anxious boy next to him, and tries to soften his look.
"Yes. I remember."
The two of them slip out of the little chapel afterward, managing to avoid any of Hiyori's family. Yato doesn't really want to relive the conversation he had with her brother.
/
Arriving instantly at the little café that's tucked away in one of the city's greener corners, he steels himself to explain, without explaining: to excuse, without excusing.
During that short conversation, he says what he can, and waits for withering, righteous blame to fall on his bent back.
He doesn't receive it.
Iki Masaomi only listens to him talk, while keeping his own silence. His hands rest palm up on the gray table; he gives Yato all his attention, looking at him through eyes that could be hers. Too much of her sits there, across that table, refusing to blame him.
"You won't tell me what really happened, will you?" Masaomi asks, without even a hint of resentment.
Yato shakes his head, all out of anything he could possibly say. There aren't enough apologies in him to make up the deficit.
Masaomi's eyes crinkle in a small smile. Yato blinks—it's Hiyori's face—and then it isn't, and he's left with dread reaching into him, resonating in him all the way to his bones. He will never be able to stop seeing her.
Masaomi is still speaking.
"She would have done it anyway—whatever it was that she was set on doing. You know her. So…I hope you don't take responsibility for something Hiyori decided on her own."
Yato's bowed head jerks up—how did he—
"I pieced some stuff together, from these,"—Masaomi holds up a handwritten note, and a business card. The note is Yukine's: the one he left in Hiyori's room on the morning of that day. The business card Yato recognizes as his own.
"So, Yato, it seems like you did what you could."
And Masaomi smiles again, but it doesn't reach any farther than the corners of his lips.
/
Despite it being a funeral, there is nothing for them to kill there. Not even the smallest slithering, liquid shadow. This would strike Yato as odd—a little unnerving, even—if he bothered to think about it.
Yukine makes a note of it as they wander back to Kofuku's.
"Do you think it's because of—you know…"
He still can't say it out loud, and Yato can't figure out if that's because Yukine doesn't want to set him off, or because he can't say it without his own voice shaking.
Yato doesn't want to tell him that it's too much—it's always been too much. For one human girl to offer herself up…
The stakes had always been too high; he had seen that from the beginning. He doesn't want to tell Yukine that no matter how brave Hiyori's sacrifice had been, it could only have resulted in a temporary suture. That was his reason for accusing the colloquy of cowardice and evil: because they had allocated to humans the responsibility of setting right a colossal imbalance. One that humans could never handle on their own—let alone just one of them.
So instead of answering, he just shrugs.
Back at home, they loiter on the porch for a few minutes before going inside. Kofuku and Daikoku had stayed home from the service so as to not sow her unlucky aura around the Iki family. Neither Yato nor Yukine feel like making conversation with them just yet.
After a few seconds of hesitation on the porch, Yukine clears his throat.
"You said the other day—something about fighting heaven."
"What—you backing out?" Yato asks. It's not a challenge. He just needs to know if he still has Yukine's support.
He needs to know, because without it, he's left with no recourse but to name a nora.
"I'm not backing out," Yukine says, a bit peevishly. "I just wanted to know if there was, y'know. A plan."
Yato blinks. Yukine eyes him expectantly, and then his shoulders slump.
"So…no plan then? Just gonna charge in, guns blazing?"
Yato snorts. Of course he has a plan. But before he can explain his very genius and foolproof plan to Yukine, Kofuku catches sight of them from inside and orders them to come in.
/
The sun sets.
Yukine stays in the kitchen to help Daikoku put everything away for the evening, and Yato lies down on his futon for the first time in a while.
At such a time, when he has to think about what happened, he turns the aftermath into a fantasy he can live with.
She's just on vacation, somewhere warm and quiet. He plans out what he'll tell her when she comes back from her trip—all the little conversations they'll have that he stores up in his head and plays to himself during nights he can't sleep. Which, now, is all of them.
There is another thing he does when he can't sleep.
He closes his eyes, and leans his head back, and imagines what it will be like—taking it out on them.
He will speak to the High Sentinel face-to-face; he will learn which of the gods had decided it was okay to trick a human into fixing their problems for them. Yato knows how persuasive he can be.
And, after the High Sentinel has whispered the information to him—she can only whisper, because her airway has been chopped up so neatly, flesh pared down to tendon and peeling in translucent curls like the skin of a fruit—then. He will find them.
It takes a lot to kill a god. But it takes surprisingly little to hurt one.
His lips curve up angelically. It's a delicious image, and the only one that really cheers him.
The other one—the one with Hiyori on her little, perfect island—that one is too aching, too precious, to be revisited much. He brings it out and holds it sometimes, softly, in the center of his palm, like a diamond. He puts it away quickly before it can be damaged.
He can't hold it for long, on account of his hands—how dark and dripping they are, stained from his other dream.
A corner of his mind is nagging him: sending pinpricks of ice that try to steer him toward a suggestion of guilt. How would he look right now, to her?
But he crushes that troublesome instinct—again and again—because she's not there to judge him anymore.
No one would really judge him for what he's about to do. Even Yukine, his supposed moral compass, is on his side.
"You're not gonna kill anybody ever again—not if I can help it."
Yato's eyes fly open. The Yukine-voice in his mind is loud—alarmingly so. Before he can prevent himself, he's answering it.
"I'm not going to kill anyone. Just…make them want to die. There's a hell of a difference."
Inner-Yukine snorts.
"Oh, how very 'god-of-fortune' of you."
Yato squeezes his eyes shut again and fists his hands in his hair, accidentally pulling some of it out at the roots. That's enough. Enough already.
He heaves himself all the way up from the futon, and scrawls a note on the blank side of Yukine's homework: tomorrow, sunset. And then he writes directions to a place he knows: a place that feels like the correct starting point for this type of errand.
Then he leaves behind the building he calls home, and starts walking toward that other place. To wait.
And—hopefully—to be alone inside his own damn mind.
/
Kazuma stands attentively in front of Bishamon's desk, waiting for her to react with anything other than a blank stare. At the moment, it's her only possible response to the news he's just delivered.
Despite the shock of it, she has to admit that she had anticipated its arrival. She had felt it, like the prickle of electricity before lightning.
"Yato and Yukine…attacking the heavens?"
"Yes. And today, apparently."
Bishamon tilts her chair back and presses her knuckles to her forehead.
"I expected more from Yato's guidepost. He should know better than to let his master entertain such an idea."
"Well…Yukine was actually the one to tell me about it."
She stops kneading her temples and looks up at him.
Kazuma's expression is serious…but also, could it be, a bit smug? She still thinks it was a good plan to have him look out for those two, but the responsibility may have gone to his head. He is, after all, still human.
Humoring him, she says:
"Then you have been a good example to him, Kazuma. But what does he expect to gain by feeding us information on Yato's foolish revenge plot?"
Kazuma responds with silence, and Bishamon makes the connection herself.
"Ah. I see. So the young hafuri is much more clever than he seems."
"It's the influence of his mentor, I'm sure," says Kazuma. She looks down at her fingernails, but can still hear him smirking.
"So—to whom do you tell tales when I am the problematic one, Kazuma?" she retorts, expecting this to effectually shut him down.
At his silence, she looks up again. His face has instantly sobered, but not with the abashed expression she expects. Instead, his eyes cloud over with something ancient, and painful.
Bishamon remembers then—as if it were she instead who withstood the long, agonizing bite of guilt and grief, and the shoeless toil through mud to the doorstep of calamity.
Save my master, please, Yatogami. I will give you anything.
"I am sorry," she whispers, her hand over her eyes. He kneels down beside her chair.
"Veena…"
She takes a deep breath, and pinches the bridge of her nose, hard.
"I will go. I will talk to him. He may not listen."
Kazuma presses a hand over hers, where it rests on the arm of the chair.
"He will listen. I'm sure of it."
His voice is strong, and she sets her other hand over his, thumb gliding over the shape of his name. His fingers are warm and steady.
/
She finds Yato at one of the decrepit shrines: a place he used to frequent in other days, but not recently. Not for many decades.
He's sitting on the bench with his back to her, and so doesn't see her approach. When he at last hears her footsteps, his spine stiffens and he turns around quickly.
"Why are you here?!"—then, glancing around, trying to look past her—
"Wait—where's Yukine?"
Bishamon walks all the way up to the bench and stops, standing directly in front of him. He's taken off guard at her fast approach and rears back a little.
He's weaponless, and she has arrived the same way. Their conversation will be private, and—if not strictly peaceful—at least free of outright combat.
When she speaks, her voice is quiet and reproving:
"You are fortunate that your hafuri has more sense than you do, Yato. Were you hoping to trap him in your own miserable suicide?"
Yato's jaw snaps shut with an audible click, the muscles of his neck working as he realizes what Yukine has done. She waits for him to bolt, but he doesn't.
"I would never do that to him," he finally says. "It's not a death sentence for either of us."
Bishamon makes a low, dismissive noise.
Above them, and off in the distance, there is a reverberating rumble. Glancing upward, she sees the sky undulate with clouds, the air trapped beneath them full of moisture and crackling heat. It's the kind of weather that could give birth to a late summer squall.
"A renegade god fueled by undisciplined rage and his sole shinki, attacking the forces of heaven. Explain to me how that's not a suicide mission."
He opens his mouth to retort, but she cuts him off before he can muster an argument.
"You might also try explaining how your vow to become a god of fortune includes throwing your life away. Explain how this recklessness of yours honors the shrine that girl made for you. Explain how your devotion to your worshiper—your friend—justifies using her sacrifice as fuel for your own self-destruction."
Yato looks away from her, his glassy gaze falling off to the left, fixating on something invisible. She resolutely ignores the ticcing vein in his forehead.
"If you can explain all this satisfactorily, then I will join you myself and back your cause against heaven. But until then, I will make it my aim to stop you."
She waits. Looking at him, slouched on the shrine bench, she wonders if he really intended to go through with it at all.
He stays silent for a minute, and during that time she notices how bad he really looks. How tired—like his body is inhabited by something much older, and much sadder, than the Yato she's always ever seen.
At last he speaks, almost too quietly for her to hear.
"Why did you come, Bishamon?"
"Because I still owe you. It is my responsibility to curb your actions before you make an enormous mistake."
"What makes you think I'm making a mistake?" he asks dully, after another, shorter silence. He puts his elbows on his knees and rests his chin in one hand.
Bishamon pauses before answering. Then, instead, she sits down next to him.
On the bench beside her, his whole posture stiffens with suspicion. She doesn't look at him, but speaks to the empty air in front of her.
"I know what revenge looks like on you, Yato. You do not wear it well. And you know, as well as I do, that people who become ayakashi are in torment. They suffer eternally, without any hope of peace."
Her voice is softer now, and she hopes he'll remember. As deeply as he hurts now, she has hurt in much the same way: a long time ago, and hundreds of times over.
However, it's still not enough to prepare her for the cruelty of the next words that come from her mouth.
"So, if you really want to help her, then return to your task. Destroy every corrupted spirit you find—and hope with all your heart that one of them is hers."
Rain begins to come down, gently at first, soaking into the rotting roof slats of the old shrine. Then, the shower quickens, drumming with staccato knuckles on the earth, the bench, their heads.
The downpour is upon them. And in the distance, a storm.
/
What is her anchor, again? Is it…a smell, perhaps? A color?
But smell and color are all entangled with and vomited out from each other: there is only one—the capital SENSE—the all-consuming, ever-devouring mouth that demands more, more, unendingly. More.
There is something still in her that resists giving herself over to it—that resists letting it pull her into itself and drain her and fill her up with a voice that is not hers, a hunger that is not hers. Maybe she is surviving, or maybe she is only warping: being towed into the half of her that was always lurking, and now roars forth amidst the powerful collective of its fellows.
She thinks—if thought is there, and for the most part it isn't—that there must have been something…before.
Before she was so very hungry.
hi guys! a quick update: as much as I love posting chapters every few days, I won't be able to keep it up for the upcoming weeks and/or months, for two reasons.
reason #1: I'm also working on updating my other norafic, god of ashes, which has fallen sorely under the radar in the wake of my obsessive need to finish this one!
reason #2: I'm preparing to go abroad for several months starting in mid-September, so that's taking up a lot of my energy/time/sanity, etc….so from now until the end of December, updates are gonna be sporadic, at best. :(
that being said! I'll do my best to not leave you hanging for too many days at a time, depending on my travel plans and internet situation. feel free to shoot me a message on tumblr anytime asking about progress, if you like. :) my answer may not be enlightening, but I'll be happy to respond to the best of my ability.
and finally, thank you, profusely, for all your lovely feedback on this. (◡‿◡✿)